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| What is OCAP? |
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What is OCAP? |
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OCAP - OpenCable Application PlatformInteractive TV usually means the viewer using the remote control to "interact" with the TV to change the available video, audio and any graphics in some way. These changes are typically made by an interactive software application running in the set-top-box or TV. The purpose of this process is to enhance the viewer's experience by possibly showing additional information (the local weather whilst watching the Weather Channel), voting during a news program or purchasing an item during a favourite TV show related to that show. OCAP is a standard for writing and delivering to the home interactive TV applications specifically for the US cable market.
OCAP
stands for the
"OpenCable Application Platform".
It is also known as the OpenCable Platform. It is based on a
programming language designed by Sun Microsystems called Java.
OCAP applications are delivered to home by encoding these Java applications into the digital TV signal. Digital TV is compressed using a format called MPEG and OCAP is transmitted in an object carousel encoded with the MPEG audio and video packets.
ETV and EBIF - ETV Binary Interchange Format
ETV-EBIF
is an alternative standard for interactive TV applications for
US cable. OCAP requires recent model set-top-boxes to run due to memory
and CPU requirements. The cable companies (currently Time Warner Cable) have
only just started installing OCAP set-top-boxes at the subscriber's homes.
ETV is designed to run on the so-called legacy boxes,
most typically the S-A Explorer 2000 and the DCT 2000 from Motorola.
These boxes are very common in US homes and it will take several years
for the US cable companies to replace these with the newer OCAP boxes.
So in the meantime, ETV interactive TV applications can be made available
for the legacy boxes.
ETV is a binary format, "ETV Binary Interchange Format", also known as EBIF. It is interpreted by a "user agent" which is a native application which runs on the set-top-box which is installed remotely by the cable company. ETV is particularly suitable for authoring interactive commercials because ETV applications are very compact and can download to the set-top-box very rapidly. |
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