US Cable Support > Comcast Cable TV > Panasonic HD-DVR with Tru2way guide (video)

Panasonic HD-DVR with Tru2way guide (video)

reply to cypherstream
looks promising but should have come way sooner.

reply to cypherstream
They should have come up with an easier said name, the presenter even had trouble saying it . The main thing that disappoints me about Comcast's DVR offerings is the software/hardware integration seems generally awful, from the lackluster UI to the unresponsiveness of the unit when it's given commands from the remote is unacceptable in this day and age. Can't tell if it's poorly written firmware/software to underpowered hardware.

reply to plat2on1

reply to cypherstream
Other than the fact I came here and leaked this to you guys 18 months ago, the reply's to cypher's post clearly indicate nobody truly understands what they just saw.

OCAP is dead and is now tru2way. tru2way is a collaborative effort between ALL cable companies in the USA and Canada and then is approved by the FCC. tru2way, formally OCAP, uses ATSC standards to communicate data over cable, plus additional cable extensions that OTA broadcasts do not require. The reason it "took so long" is simple:

1. javatv API was still being developed. Trials in France and Hong Kong were troublesome, yet over the last three years were very successful after running the API's on top of a specific Linux kernel that was finally developed for just this purpose.

2. Cable companies required upgrades to consumers and head-end equipment which had questionable ROI. Since capacity upgrades can not be avoided, the Moto DAC 6000 is just part of the upgrade now and OCAP is ready to go.

3. The FCC refused to give approval without seperable security.

1 and 2 were completed in 2004, yet no roll out. 3 finally happened in the summer of 2007. By that time, HDTV had a solid foot-print and Comcast along with Cox and Rogers presented DVR data to Sony, Panasonic, Microsoft, LG, Samsung and my favorite, Intel (more on this later). They bought it and signed up. Motorola and Cisco (owner of Scientific Atlanta) were already on board.

What was the goal of OCAP now known as tru2way?

1. ELIMINATE rental equipment. A tv shouldn't need a box to work. Video On-Demand, guide, Pay Per View, and ANY other service the cable TV supplier offers will work with a TV. The FCC calls this iDCR, for "interactive Digital Cable Ready". The cable industry calls it tru2way, now. Kinda like Vaseline is a petroleum jelly.

2. Develop an effecient global API that any company can write applications for. Tivo is a tru2way licensed company, expect them to come out with something better than the Gemstar guide you saw in that video.... by the way, that's MyTVGuide on the TV and the next "iGuide" known as JGuide on the STB.

3. Allow the stuff to be purchased by the consumer directly, well... that was the FCC's goal.

So, here we are. I've posted time and time again you would be able to buy an iDCR TV by fall of 2008, a TV that needs NO CABLE BOX.

So what's this do for me? Easy....

No more renting from cable company
No more needing a "box" for stations above 100 that you pay for, but can't watch.
No more slow 8 color guides.
No more worrying about compatibility, like TiVo and SDV.
No more "I hate the look of the Motorola box"
One remote, the TV remote

More importantly, wait until the real interactive TV apps begin showing up. Like advertisements that let you click a button on the remote to call the pizza shop in the ad; or CNN with it's ticker at the bottom allowing you to "click" a headline to read a more in-depth article; or the Weather Channel allowing you to punch in a zip code to see weather in another city along the bottom.... These are just the one's written already...

How does tru2way communiate application data? It uses a Docsis 3.0 modem.

Oh, by the way, looks like the 100mbps claim for Docsis 3.0 I made 3 months ago was wrong. Comcast is now saying 160mbps.

On to Intel. Intel is developing a GPU named Larrabee to compete directly with Nvidia and ATI/AMD's graphics cards. Larrabee graphics cards will be tru2way, so far. So your build-my-own HTPC and work with cable is closer to reality. Options to us all will begin to arrive shortly. By 2010, the old 2007 stuff will look like cave men used it.

When will this be in my area!? No telling. If your headend has a Moto DAC already, a simple software revision will enable the entire system for OCAP, sorry, tru2way. Considering the MotoTiVo installs required a truck-roll, it looks like auto-updating isn't quite perfected yet. So flipping a switch isn't a reality yet.

This all sounds great but it's hard to get excited when things move around here (Comcast) like a snail through molasses. What is the incentive for Comcast to rid us of our non-DVR cable boxes (which they get revenue from)? Look at CableCard, they don't push it because it removes the revenue stream from the Cable box/PPV, why is this different (excepting PPV will now work)?

I'm cautiously optimistic about this renamed OCAP, if it's truly embraced and rolled out it sounds fantastic. When fall rolls around I'll be happy to see iDCR/tru2way devices start rolling out (hopefully).

No MSO has ever made profit from renting cable boxes. It is an acceptable loss, nowadays, due to the penetration to sell VOD and PPV; not to mention the offer of more than 75 channels to compete with satellite.

PPV, VOD, SDV, CDV-CID all work on tru2way.

Being cautiously optimistic about embracing it is not needed. Panasonic, TiVo, Samsung, Sony, Motorola, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, ATI/AMD, LG have ALL bought licenses to tru2way and will begin making products. Being cautiously optimistic about it coming to YOUR town in 2008 is certainly valid and warranted. 2009 is more likely, 2010 is almost gauranteed.

So what's the incentive?

1. Reduced LOSS in STB rentals (the average DVR from Moto costs between $650-700 per unit depending on size of the order; the "DVR Fee" from Comcast is $15 on average; which some is payment for software licensing to Gemstar, Macrovision, and Philips. Most DVR's are traded in due to defect after 3 years of service. So it costs $650 and roughly $430 is recovered)

2. Reduction in support. The manufacturer will now have to offer support, eventually... in the beginning, Comcast will have to step up or loose frustrated customers.

3. Reduction in development. Comcast can buy one EPG for it's ENTIRE national footprint. Wether regions run Cisco or Moto out of the headend doesn't matter. The manufacturer of the display or STB also no longer matters.

4. Increased advertisement revenue: Interactive advertisements will be charged more to be viewed.

5. Satellite can't compete. DirecTV has 150 HD linear channels that you only have access to 78 of them for $100/mo... fine, Comcast has 60-90 linear channels that everyone can watch PLUS interactive TV (2009-2010). The Weather Channel will most likely be first on this, others will follow. National adds can add interactive features... like a Dyson vacuum commercial where you can click on the vacuum during it's live real-time ad to launch a 45 second VOD commercial that's more in-depth, such as the story how Hoover told him bag vacuums will only be sold forever. Now, the ad has become direct revenue through the VOD portion where as the national ad was revenue for ESPN.

6. Value Additional - pay per view in every home, box or not... VOD in every home, box or not... but MORE IMPORTANTLY; in 2009 when you buy an iDCR/tru2Way TV to replace the old blown up CRT that was in the basement to play DVD's for the kids NOW HAS VOD ACCESS. $1.99 to watch Cars next year can be seen outside of the main TV without a box; a box that cost both the customer and Comcast money. VOD and PPV in every home = nice. VOD and PPV on EVERY TV in every home = FANTASTIC.

7. DON'T NEED A BOX. Can you see the commercials? "We have 2,000 hours of VOD HD material, 500 hours of PPV HD material, 60 HD stations and no need to rent equipment to see any of them; one remote does it all". The incentive for Grandma to finally convince Grandpa to buy one of those digital tv things. "Look Chester, we won't need 3 remotes anymore" "I don't care Anibell, if it's digital, I won't buy it"... no choice Chester, all TV's will be iDCR over the next year.

8. Project Infinity's latter stages will need OCAP applications to better organize it's offerings (The new name of the huge expansion of VOD).

9. Many fortune 500 companies plunked down big bucks for OCAP, sorry, tru2way licenses. There better be an audience soon.

10. Complete removal of analog, introduction of SDV, VOD/PPV going IPTV can now be implemented FASTER without any cost, for any iDCR equipment can view it and anything else that comes along in the future with a quick API download to the equipment. tru2way is Cable's first attempt to future-proof. Between Summer 2009 and end of 2012 has been projected as the time more analog TV's will be replaced with digital. If they are iDCR, then we could see analog finally die by the end of 2012 since a penetration over 60% in all households will exist that can watch ANY cable offering without seperate equipment.

11. It's an FCC requirement; odd... this probably has the least motivational value. Unfortunately, it is not yet a regulation. The ATSC chunk of regs hasn't been officially adopted just yet. DCR, however, was required on all TV's sold around December 2007. iDCR will soon follow, for the FCC learned that a DCR TV can't see DTV after all... the government at work.

Not the guide, but the ads you see on TV today.

Here's the example.

Four Hairy Guy's Pizza and Subs wants to make a commercial. They hire a production team that films some cheesy local ad, like everyone else. They then offer them an "interactive" feature. The feature are two little boxes in the lower left of the screen, one says "menu" the other says "call now!". When the commercial is aired, the user can use the left and right arrows of their remote and hit ok/enter on either box. For menu, the screen is filled with a scrollable text menu of the restaraunt. For call now, if the user has CDV or a phone line plugged into the box if they don't; your phone begins ringing and when you pick up, it auto-dials the pizzaria. Of course, this "interactive" advertisement will cost more to air, bringing in more ad revenue for Comcast. In addition, as with the Dyson example above; national ads that pay broadcasters such as ESPN and ABC money to air commercials, could pair a VOD ad with their national ad and offer a "see more" button during their commercials, which Comcast would charge for the VOD ad (the "see more" button would launch a VOD "movie" advertisement). These ideas and more are currently being investigated by the "Searchlight" division of Comcast.

Ads in the guides... I dunno. That's up to Gemstar. If they put aside an area for ads in their guide, Comcast WILL fill it up. While I can't foresee this NOT happening; most of the pictures/videos of MyTVGuide seem to be so clean, so crisp, so organized that an ad here and there really won't detract from this much needed upgrade. The new guide is great and if a little ad is included, so be it, it will always be an improvement over what we have. If the ad takes up half the screen, then maybe I'll be forced to buy a tru2way TiVo.

C'mon now, ads aren't always a bad thing. I would have never learned of the Flobee or Bedazzler without them!

Now the bad news.... you know those little movies that appear in the bottom corners during shows for other shows? Those could easily become interactive with a box above them saying "Hit ok to record me", and hitting ok/enter while they're on the screen will pop up a window confirming that your recording is set for that show... good/bad... some will love it, others will wonder how you could ever watch a show with so much else going on. Information overload will be easy with this stuff. Hell, in 3-5 years, we may have "This show is brought to you with limited interactive interruption by Mazda; zoom zoom".

But these are advanced features of tru2way, the base of this service is to eliminate the STB and introduce TV's and other devices that can access all Cable services. Personally, I can't wait for REAL HTPC building to be possible.

reply to cypherstream
This all sounds great, but why do I get the feeling that Comcast will still want to charge $15.95 a month ($8.95 digital outlet fee + $7.00 HDTV fee) for every one of these iDCR ready TVs that you buy in 2009? The funny thing is that you won't be able to buy a non-HDTV in 2009 and the $8.95 outlet fee was originally there to cover Comcast's basic box rental...

15.95? no. 8.95 for the digital outlet and a 1.50 for the cable-card, maybe. If there's enough resistance, they'll have to lower these fees. Plus "DVR access" will ALWAYS be charged a fee. Wether or not this is "per house" or "per device" is yet to be seen.

I'm sorry, did you expect this to be cheaper for YOU?!? AAAHAHAHAHA!!!! Silly consumer...

I agree. There is a technical reason for the outlet fee: bandwidth and IP addresses. IPv6 will help solve this, as the node shouldn't run out of IP addresses with IPv6 (each device will need it's own IP for VOD and security). There is a lot of talk about a home gateway. I've seen a few Motorola products already in production for this. It's a CDV/HSI/TV box. One RF cable in, one RF cable out, one phone jack out, two ethernet jacks out (one is USB). The "TV" will be split from here. What they do with it is unkown, but as a "gateway" it would reduce the amount of IP handouts from the node, since everything behind the gateway wouldn't need a new IP. The possibilities are limitless: the "security" could be handled here, eliminating the need for a cable card in every device; digital to analog could be handled here to allow compliance with the 2009 must carry options; a HSI/CDV modem would be in every home for greater penetration potential... who knows? There's a lot of forks in the road right now.

reply to markofmayhem

reply to DaveDude
Your post can't be more incorrect.

Bandwidth = Each new VOD accessible device can access VOD. Each VOD movie requires a QAM allocation. Most nodes can only handle 3-4 QAM channels dedicated to VOD. That's 18-24 SD and 6-8 HD at any one time per node (or a combination of the two). More "free" QAM channels will be needed to expand VOD offerings per node. Right now, VOD is a static bit rate. The combination of a new variable bit-rate compression and shaping the QAM channel to fill with the most offerings will allow one QAM to carry more VOD requests. Out right upgrades plus IPTV offerings with a buffer at the device end (burst transmission instead of streaming) will eventually be needed. This is part of "Project Infinity".

IP shortage: Comcast has had an IP address problem for sometime. The office of the CTO made this nice little document to convince the money-men to spend more on IPv6:
»www.nanog.org/mtg-0606/pdf/alain-durand.pdf

I guess the CTO at Comcast should be informed they are incorrect?

FWIW my node has 83-1 through 86-12 for VOD. So that would be 48 possible SD streams. Most I ever counted at once though must of been about 8 SD streams and 1 HD stream across all 4 QAMs. I guess you have to take into account the percentage of digital cable subscribers on one node that may want to watch VOD at that exact moment in time.

reply to markofmayhem

I would love the $15 credit!

I don't have network design experience. Maybe this article will shine some light?

»www.cedmagazine.com/article.aspx···igration