At a recent press breakfast, someone asked top executives of Sony Electronics about their plans to let their televisions show video delivered by the Internet. While the company has an early effort, called the Bravia Internet Link, Stan Glasgow, the president of Sony Electronics in the United States, said the company can now introduce better products because it has reached an agreement with the cable industry.
Sony’s Bravia Internet Video Link module.My back arched like a cornered cat. Why should cable companies have anything to say about what I watch that is not on their system?
I spoke to Mr. Glasgow afterward. What he said made sense and even showed a small ray of hope for an area of technology that has been far too stagnant.
Right now, he explained, the Sony Bravia Internet Link and all the other set-top boxes that get Internet content connect to televisions separately from cable systems.
“If you have to ask a consumer to switch sources constantly between cable and another source, it is not the normal consumer experience,” he said. “There has to be a more integrated way to have cable and Internet content on the same user interface.”
I know that many Bits readers scoff at the idea that pushing the “input” button on a remote is any problem at all. Many of you describe rather complex rigs for watching television. But deep in your hearts, you know that you are a geeky minority and Mr. Glasgow is right that many people really want a drop-dead simple interface.
What does it take to make that happen? A lot of time and excruciating meetings, it turns out.
“We’ve worked with the cable companies for five years to develop a system that would allow us and the rest of the television manufacturers to have alternative content on the TV,” Mr. Glasgow said.
The main negotiations were between Sony and Comcast, Mr. Glasgow said, but the deal involves more cable systems and electronics makers. A rather cryptic press release was issued about the agreement last may titled “Sony Electronics and Major U.S. Cable Operators Negotiate National ‘Two-Way’ Plug and Play Solution.”
The deal called for Sony to support the latest incarnation of CableCard, the system that in theory will eventually let a television tap into all the features of a cable system, including premium channels and video on demand, without the need for a set-top box.
This technology was mandated by Congress in 1996, but it has been bogged down for years over a variety of technical and economic issues. A crucial fight has been over who gets to control the program guide and interface people use to pick what shows to watch. By forcing customers to use their set-top boxes and program guides, cable companies hoped to preserve their right to promote pay-per-view movies and other potentially lucrative services. And the television makers, of course, didn’t want to be locked out of any possible money to be made.
Under pressure from the Federal Communications Commission, the cable industry and electronics makers reached what I might call the “two-guide compromise.” Each device using the new CableCard standard, called Tru2Way, will offer the cable system guide and also a guide developed by the manufacturer, which can include links to cable programs, Internet video and anything else it can think up.
A related agreement binds the largest cable systems to make sure that they will support Tru2Way by July 1, 2009. Tru2Way enables interactive services like video on demand that the first version of CableCard did not.
This agreement, which was filed with the F.C.C., has the careful wording of a nuclear disarmament treaty. For instance, a TV maker’s program guide “may overlay the manufacturer’s navigation control method over cable screens if the overlay (i) is user initiated for each use, (ii) is solely for navigation (e.g., no ads), (iii) is transitory, and (iv) appears the same regardless of the channel.”
Later, I checked in with Richard Green, the chief executive of CableLabs, which publishes the CableCard standard. He confirmed Mr. Glasgow’s account of the two-guide compromise and said it would help propagate Tru2Way.
“Sony coming aboard was a huge step forward,” he said. “It allows a common platform.”
There is a lot of good that may come from the evolution of this standard. If it works, you may ultimately have fewer remote controls cluttering your coffee table. And you won’t have to choose between a video recorder with lots of features, say from TiVo, and one that works well with your cable system.
Even more interesting, the Tru2Way technology includes a programming environment, based on Java, that allows applications to interact with television signals. You can imagine an application that lets you trash-talk “American Idol” contestants with your MySpace buddies or draw electronic mustaches on the face of political candidates as they debate. There could be the equivalent of the iPhone App Store for your television.
There’s only one problem here: All of these applications have to be tested by CableLabs and approved by your cable operator. That’s the same crowd that took five years to agree to let Sony build its own electronic program guide.
Mr. Green of CableLabs says he hopes that that is going to change.
“The cable industry is not known for its openness,” he said. “One of the real drivers for us, and why we spent so many years and so many meetings to get the interface done, is to open the cable interface to innovation. ”
I’m not holding my breath. When I asked Mr. Glasgow when we will see products from Sony that simply offer that program guide mixing cable and Internet video, he said they may not be available until 2010 or later.
“This takes time,” he said. “I would love it to occur tomorrow. I get very frustrated.”
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