Ed's view - The Interactive "Cable Ready" Standard

[Ed Milbourn]

<em>An interview with Brian Smith on the status of the Cable/CE negotiations to establish a fully open interactive digital Cable Ready standard</em>


Brian Smith is a both good friend and a former business colleague of mine at RCA/Thomson. Brian presently is VP of Technology Policy and Standards for Philips N.A. and, of special significance to us, is the Chairman of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) Video Division Board of Directors. The CEA Video Board addresses many CE common issues, chief among them being that of representing the CE industry in the ongoing "Interactive Cable Ready" standard negotiations. The objective of this standard is to ultimately replace the unidirectional CableCARD cable interface with a system that downloads a plethora of interactive services for digital Cable subscribers.

But developing this standard, based on Cable's OCAP (Open Cable Applications Protocol) system, is proving to be one of the most daunting tasks, both technically and commercially, to have been tackled by both industries. Brian took time from his busy schedule to give us a comprehensive update relative to several salient aspects of the negotiations:



<strong>ED: Generally, what is the present state of the negotiations?</strong>

BKS: Slow going. There are fundamental business issues on each side which conflict with each other and

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