Louisville, Colo. – Cable TV industry-standards body
said it recently gathered 37
participants from 11 companies to demonstrate the next phase in Tru2way/Digital
Living Network Alliance (DLNA) interoperability.
The event demonstrated sharing of premium DVR content among
multiple Tru2way set-top boxes and DLNA-certified devices, such as connected
TVs, game consoles, PCs and mobile devices, over a home network in a secure
manner.
“Providing an environment where cable and consumer electronics
manufacturers can work with each other and solve problems to advance home
entertainment networking technologies is a valuable service that CableLabs
provides to the industry,” stated Paul Liao, CableLabs president and CEO.
Set-top manufacturers attending the showcase included ADB, Cisco,
Samsung Electronics and Motorola; they were joined by such DLNA-certified
device manufacturers as Panasonic, Samsung and Sony, and DLNA technology
component vendors including Microsoft, Cyberlink, Irdeto, Myriad and NDS.
Program guides with multi-room DVR capability from Cox (Trio) and
Time Warner Cable (OCAP Digital Navigator v.4.0) were also used in the
demonstrations, CableLabs said.
The event followed CableLabs’ recent revision of the home-networking
extension specification and associated reference implementation that is part of
the Tru2way suite of specifications.
CableLabs said it believes that integrating home networking into
the overall specification “enhances the Tru2way platform, making premium
content sharing possible among multiple set-top boxes and DLNA-certified
devices within a home network.”
The DLNA interoperability guidelines are the foundation of
Tru2way home-networking specifications. The premium cable content is protected
using DTCP-IP as it is transmitted over the home network.
“By using the Tru2way
home-networking specification we can now offer pre-recorded premium content
from cable set-top boxes to various DLNA-certified devices, enabling consumers
to watch cable content anytime using any device in the home” said Mike Hayashi,
Time Warner Cable advanced engineering executive VP.
“Now a Cox cable consumer can utilize Cox’s Trio guide to record
an event on the DVR in the family room and access it later from the bedroom
television, thus enabling the promise of multi-room DVR capability,” said Craig
Smithpeters, Cox Communications interactive services engineering executive
director.
Content sharing among set-top boxes is enabled via a Multimedia
over Coax Alliance (MoCA) 1.1 network that utilizes in-home coax wiring, thus
alleviating the need to run new wiring within the home. MoCA can support
multiple streams of HD video and offers 175Mbps of throughput.
