OCAP™ is the Open Cable Application Platform which has been adopted by the US cable industry. In OCAP the various DVB technologies and specifications that are not used in the US cable environment are removed and replaced by their functional equivalents, as specified in GEM (Globally Executable MHP). Trials and interoperability events took place throughout 2004 and announcements of service launches are expected this year. (For more information see DVB-Scene, Issue 13.)
On the terrestrial broadcast side, Cablelabs® and ATSC have worked together to define a common GEM-based specification, ACAP, which will ensure maximum compatibility between cable and over-the-air broadcast receivers. ACAP has recently been elevated to the status of "ATSC Proposed Standard" and cooperation with DVB is on-going. There is particularly strong interest in ACAP from Korea .
(For more on GEM see the DVB white paper, MHP Platform Harmonisation)
Updated: 29/03/2005
