Interactive TV in the United States has had more starts and stops than a commuter train during rush hour. But with tru2way that’s about to change.

At the National Cable and Telecommunications Association’s (NCTA) Cable Show ’08 in New Orleans in May, tru2way was a dominant theme. It spilled out from conference sessions onto the exhibition floor with roughly 20 demonstrations that focused on tru2way. There was also a pre-Show conference co-sponsored by the NCTA and CableLabs.

The fact that the vendor community was showing so many tru2way applications, as well as ETV (Enhanced TV) and EBIF (Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format) applications, is evidence that US cable operators are finally getting down to brass tacks when it comes to deploying interactive, tru2way services for their subscribers.

During a panel session at the conference, Marwan Fawaz, CTO of Charter Communications, was asked what technology or products would be the most transformative for the cable industry.

“tru2way is the most promising area for cable,” Fawaz said. “It standardizes on an open platform that is Java-based so that developers can start taking advantage of the platform because there’s still a lot we can do with it.”

Introduction to tru2way

Tru2way was originally part of the OpenCable initiative that CableLabs launched in 1997 to promote the deployment of interactive services over cable. OCAP consists of a stack of middleware software that resides between applications and the operating system within a consumer electronics device such as a set-top box or OCAP-compliant TV set.

Java-based OpenCable devices can have new information or applications ported to them because of their two-way capabilities, with ETV and EBIF being designated as lighter weight applications that can run on legacy set-top boxes before porting over to a full OpenCable environment.

For developers, content providers and broadcasters, OCAP holds the promise of “write once, deploy everywhere,” as opposed to writing to various proprietary platforms.

OCAP was based on the European Globally Executable Multimedia Home Platform standard, but while MHP found its way into customers’ homes around the globe, OCAP has pretty much languished in the United States.

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Comcast: heading for total tru2way capability

Comcast, the largest US cable operator, is working on a three-pronged approach for interactivity that includes EBIF and ETV applications which can run on legacy set-top boxes and which can be ported into OCAP boxes down the road.

Roughly 60 percent of Comcast’s networks will be ETV-enabled by the end of the year and it will have tru2way network capability in 98 percent of its network by the close of next year, according to Sree Kotay, Comcast Cable’s Senior Vice President and Chief Software Architect. Comcast expects 15 percent of its total devices to be two-way by the end next year while 50 percent will be Java-capable in the same timeframe.

“We think that tru2way is a game changer for us in terms of our ability to innovate on the software features. If there’s a theme for us around tru2way it’s that software is important, experience matters, and we have to move to a layered model if we want to deliver innovative experiences to our consumers,” said Comcast’s Kotay.

Time Warner: Gearing up for tru2way

At one of the tru2way panel sessions in New Orleans, Bill Helms, Time Warner Cable’s Vice President, Subscriber Equipment, said his company has OCAP installed in 40 percent of its footprint across 16 operating divisions in various regions with 900,000 subscribers and 1.1 million set-top boxes. Time Warner Cable is the second-largest cable operator in the US.

“We’re going to continue our OCAP rollouts to the rest of our markets as fast as we can, Helms said. “We’ll continue to innovate. The two primary innovations we’re most interested in right now are bringing in EBIF and ETV support as well as bringing in home networking on the OCAP platform.”

Cox: OnRamp applications in 5 markets

Cox Communications, the third largest US cable operator, currently has a version of OnRamp deployed in five markets. Cox’s OnRamp applications include an e-mail viewer, news, weather, horoscopes, movie listings and sports. The list continues.

Cox has completed two tru2way technical trials and expects to deploy the technology heavily in the first half of 2009.

“There are many hopes and expectations for the use of tru2way,” said Steve Necessary, Cox’s Vice President of Video Product Development and Management. “I think of tru2way as doing for set top boxes and retail devices what Windows did for PCs.”

From the consumer’s point of view, the ability to access Internet content on their TVs is essential. Unfortunately it’s not a great tool for finding content. The reverse is true of PCs. However, through home networking and tru2way, customers will have the means to access various types of content across multiple devices.

“Television is not always the best way to discover content,” says Comcast’s Kotay, “so there are some obvious concerns that pop up in terms of user interaction, content sharing and content discovery. This is especially true when you start to have . . . hundreds of thousands of (video) assets available to you.”

Guides get tru2way makeovers

One area in which tru2way is expected to have an immediate impact is electronic program guides (EPGs). For anyone who has ever had to click their remote control numerous times to find a movie in the current grid-like guides, the tru2way guides will be a truly liberating experience.

Prior to the Cable Show, Cox Communications announced it was working with NDS to design a new set-top box interface that will allow Cox’s digital customers to access all of their digital TV services through a single, interactive user interface (UI).

Cox has designed an interactive UI for existing and new set-top boxes that it said will be deployed widely next year. Cox also said the new UI is compatible with most of its existing set-top boxes and was also designed to be compatible with tru2way enabled services.

The NDS interface will start out on Cox’s OnRamp deployments with the goal of moving it over to tru2way once Cox’s network is ready.

“It is noteworthy that our recent announcement of a ‘next generation’ user interface is being designed to run only with the OnRamp and tru2way environment. That is a powerful indicator of our commitment to and expectations for that environment,” Cox’s Necessary said.

tru2way: It’s complicated

With all this enthusiasm, why has tru2way struggled in the US cable market? First off, as many cable operator employees will tell you, it’s complicated. Aside from the OCAP middleware, there’s the complexity of operating systems and a host of other technical hurdles.

And then there was the issue of the Consumer Electronics Association which advocated its own technology, called DCR+, for interactive services. Cable operators in the US opposed DCR+ as too costly and instead put forth tru2way, or the OpenCable Platform, as the best way to provision interactive digital and HD video services.

Recently the pendulum has swung in tru2way’s favor. In May, Sony signed a new memorandum of understanding to develop tru2way with CableLabs and the six largest cable operators in the United States. Then in June, Panasonic, Samsung, Advanced Digital Electronics (ADB), Intel and Digeo also signed the new memorandum of understanding.

Cable operators that have announced support for the tru2way platform on their networks are Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, Cablevision, Charter and BrightHouse Networks. Together they represent over 80 percent of all US cable subscribers and 105 million homes.

After 11 years of incubation, it seems that tru2way is poised for flight. Stay tuned.

The author is based in Colorado and has been reporting on the telecommunications industry since 1999.