More Than 20 Companies Participate in Latest CableLabs ETV Interop

CableLabs hosted another in a series of enhanced TV (ETV) interoperability events October 4-8 that provided industry suppliers with an opportunity to test pre-production and development versions of hardware and software applications.

Representatives from 21 companies, ranging from manufacturers, application developers, and implementers to cable operators, worked together to test the latest engineering changes to the ETV and OpenCable Content Definition Format (CoDF) Specifications. These attendees also were able to evaluate the interoperability of ETV applications and ETV user agents compliant with the I05 ETV specifications, as well as candidate features of the I06 version of the ETV specifications.

Companies that participated in the interop included: Alticast, Backchannel Media, BigBand Networks, Comcast, Cox, Ensequence, EnableTV, Fourthwall Media, Inc.; HSN, icueTV Inc.; Ligos Corporation, Microsoft, PVI Virtual Media Services, LLC; RCDb, S3 Group, Softel USA, Starz, Strategy & Technology, Time Warner Cable, Unisoft, and Zodiac Interactive.

Collectively these companies brought varied capabilities to this interop, such as ETV applications, user agents, streamers and schedulers, test environments and authoring tools. As with past CableLabs interops, the week included one day of demonstrations by the participants for an audience of cable operators.

“This interop is very timely since Comcast and other operators are going to market now with EBIF-based interactive applications, both on our own and in support of Canoe Ventures’ interactive applications,” said Steve Reynolds, SVP, premises technology, at Comcast, and chair of the CableLabs Executive Technical Team overseeing the development and extension of the EBIF platform.