Cisco Headend System Release 2.7 Technical References

 

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Introducing OCAP 

738184 Rev B 

In recent years, the cable industry has worked toward developing a software 

platform standard to run interactive applications over the cable television network 

system. In response to the 1996 Telecommunications Act, CableLabs

®

 and cable 

service providers created the OpenCable Initiative to set standards for retail cable 

deployment. One of these standards, OpenCable Application Platform (OCAP), was 

developed to serve as a common software standard for the cable industry. 
OCAP is based on the European Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) Multimedia 

Home Platform (MHP) specification and was created as a Java-based middleware 

and application delivery standard. OCAP assists the industry with the delivery of 

digital signaling and interactive applications to cable subscribers. Software 

developers can use OCAP to create applications and other programs for deployment 

over host devices, such as set-top boxes and televisions. The delivery of applications 

and data to hosts is defined by the OCAP specification. 

The OCAP software uses a common method of delivering applications and data 

through the cable television network system. The OCAP software consists of three 

parts: 
• 

OCAP Applications 

• 

OCAP Middleware 

• 

Signal and Delivery Process 

One way to understand how these three parts work together is to understand how 

the pieces are dependant upon one another in the overall OCAP design. The OCAP 

applications are at the top of the OCAP software (stack). The applications are 

designed to run on any platform that supports OCAP-compliant middleware. The 

OCAP middleware is a software layer built on top of an operating system (OS) 

interface and software drivers. OCAP uses a common method of delivering 

applications and data through the cable television network system (signal and 

delivery process). 
The following drawing shows the layers of the OCAP software stack. 

 

 

OCAP Application

 

OCAP Middleware

 

OS

 

Drivers