Minor enhancements to Microsoft TV Foundation Edition, a platform that enables TV operators to deliver interactive program guides and other features to TV watchers through set-top boxes, will let the platform support new types of hardware and services, and were likely designed with cable operator Comcast in mind.

Catering to Comcast?

Announced at the May 2004 National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA) show and available in summer 2004, Foundation Edition 1.7 will support forthcoming dual-tuner digital video recording (DVR) set-top boxes from Motorola. (Dual-tuner DVR devices allow users to record one live TV show while watching a different show.) Satellite and cable TV providers have been deploying set-top boxes with built-in DVR capabilities as an incentive to get consumers to upgrade to digital cable. As a consequence, the market has shifted from the stand-alone DVR devices that pioneered the market: for instance, only 39% of the 3.2 million households using DVR in the United States at the end of 2003 were using a TiVo device, according to research by IDC. (This percentage includes set-top boxes from satellite TV provider DirecTV with built-in TiVo functionality.)

Also at the NCTA show, Microsoft announced that SeaChange's VODlink, software for TV operators to offer video-on-demand (VOD) services, will be integrated into a future version of Foundation Edition. Among VODlink's other features, the software enables TV operators to provide access to DVDs over their cable networks, potentially replacing the need for users to rent DVDs and giving them an incentive to upgrade to digital cable.

The new capabilities seem designed to appeal to Comcast, the largest cable TV operator in the United States, in which Microsoft owns a minor stake. Comcast is undertaking a major initiative to offer Motorola set-top boxes with DVR capabilities to 90% of its subscribers by the end of 2004, and is SeaChange's largest customer, deploying its VOD products in more than 30 U.S. markets. Even though Comcast has agreed to test Foundation Edition, its commitment to Microsoft's TV products is not exclusive—in Apr. 2004, for example, Comcast formed a joint development group with Gemstar-TV Guide to create an interactive program guide, rather than using Microsoft's Interactive Program Guide (IPG), which is part of Foundation Edition and is also available to TV operators on a stand-alone basis.

Also at the NCTA show, Microsoft announced that it has submitted its initial draft of the .NET common language infrastructure (CLI) specifications for inclusion in the next version of the OpenCable Application Platform (OCAP), a cable industry standard for developing interactive TV applications. The submission is a competitive move against Java, which was used as the basis for the first two versions of OCAP, but which has yet to achieve a dominant position in the set-top box market, as most TV providers have not rolled out high-end boxes capable of supporting OCAP.

Resources

Microsoft TV Foundation Edition 1.7 is described in more detail on the Microsoft TV site at www.microsoft.com/tv/content/Solutions/Foundation/MSTV_Foundation_Main.mspx.

Goals of Microsoft TV Foundation Edition are described in "New TV Platform Launched" on page 18 of the July 2003 Update.

Microsoft's IPG page is www.microsoft.com/tv/content/Solutions/Foundation/mstv_IPG_Overview.mspx.

SeaChange is at www.schange.com.  

Nonprofit research company CableLabs, which oversees OCAP, is at www.cablelabs.org.