
–2–
Another OpenCable specification, OpenCable
Applications Platform (OCAP), defines the soft-
ware layer (middleware) for the STB that makes
applications and services portable regardless of
the hardware or operating system software. The
combination of POD and OCAP enables the
development of an open market for STB platform
vendors to receive services independent of the
cable operators.
The POD provides the following functions:
– Choice of digital broadcast security
– Choice of scrambling system
– Choice of out-of-band signaling
PC Card Compliance
The POD Module interface is registered to the
PC Card Standard as the POD Module
Custom Interface with the interface ID num-
ber (STCI_IFN) allocated to equal hexadecimal
341. If the Host is not capable of operating with
the POD Module, the Host will ignore the POD
Module. The POD Module presents the 16-bit PC
Card memory-only interface after an application
of VCC or the RESET signal. When operating in
this configuration, D7-D0 is retained as a byte-ori-
ented I/O port, and the capability to read the
Attribute Memory is retained.
Host-POD OOB Interface
OpenCable requires support for out-of-band
(OOB) signaling. The Host RF front-end specifi-
cation provides the QPSK physical layer to
support OOB (downstream and upstream)
communications according to SCTE-DVS167r2
and SCTE-DVS178r3. The data link and media
access control protocols for SCTE-DVS167r2 and
SCTE-DVS178r3 are implemented in the POD
Module.
CPU Interface
With OOB traffic included, the POD Module
requires more bandwidth and connections on the
CPU Interface than are supported by the Data
Channel alone. Two communication paths share
the same pins on the PC Card connector.
Data Channel
– This channel is compliant
with the Command Interface protocol of SCTE-
DVS064 Part B, plus the interrupt mode exten-
sion. Applications use this path when they require
support from either Host or POD Module
resources.
Extended Channel
– This second communica-
tion channel only includes physical and link lay-
ers.
The purpose of the
Extended Channel
is to
provide a communication path between the POD
Module and the Host such that applications in one
(e.g. Host, POD Module) can communicate with
the headend via a link layer or modem function in
the other (POD Module, Host), respectively.
While the content and format of the messages for
the
Data Channel
are well defined, the content
and format of the messages for the
Extended
Channel
are application-specific.