OpenCable Platform vs. Digital Cable Ready Plus

Multichannel News has a good article on the disagreement between the NCTA, backing OCAP, and the CEA, backing DCR+. It doesn’t go into painful detail, but I think it serves as a decent overview for someone curious about the standoff. I’ve never been a fan of OCAP, since I’ve never seen a cable box UI that I liked, and I wouldn’t want to give up innovative UIs like TiVo’s. In principle I like the DCR+ proposal – standardized APIs, like web services. But I do realize it would probably take years for the cable industry to sort of the mess they’ve created over the years with the myriad of non-standard back-ends. So the OCAP compromise TiVo announced recently seems like the best option to me. Like all compromises it isn’t everything either party wants, but it provides access to advanced cable features via OCAP while preserving innovative UIs and product differentiation, while bringing products to market in the near term.