The OpenCable Application Platform.

This article examines why OpenCable Application Platform (OCAP) is a massive improvement over proprietary solutions and delve into the OCAP architecture. For a number of reasons, the closed nature of U.S. cable platforms arose by necessity, not necessarily by the design. Simply put, cable vendors were eager to transition from analog to digital networks. There are two core aspects to any closed cable solution--Conditional Access (CA) and software Application Program Interfaces. CA is the technology that encrypts and secures content. Europeans developed plans to incorporate Internet and Java-based standards into their digital television products for cable, satellite, and terrestrial markets. This effort, called the Multimedia Home Platform (MHP), was spearheaded by the Digital Video Broadcasting Project and eventually adopted as a standard by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute. A noticeable architectural difference between and OCAP is the Conditional Access Infrastructure. OCAP also differs from MHP in its use of a monitor application. In MHP, applications are launched and terminated based on the services that they are manipulating. Due to the complexities of the U.S. cable environment, OCAP has enhanced the priority-based approach of MHP with a monitor.