Posted by Aurora

Two years ago the cable industry promised tru2way was “the way” cable viewership was moving, but where did it go?

To really understand the evolution and future of tru2way we should take a step back and look at its predecessor the CableCARD.

The CableCARD goes back almost ten years, when TV manufacturers and cable TV service providers teamed up briefly for a ‘ditch the box’ effort – that is, eliminate that clunky old set-top cable box and instead build its functionality into new TV sets.

The belief then was that consumers hated having a separate set-top box, and that CableCARD functionality would make cable-ready TVs truly ‘plug and play,’ not to mention get rid of all that clutter of wiring. Some worked beautifully, while others stubbornly refused to recognize valid channel packages even when all conditional access was disabled. The pairing issues, and reluctance of manufacturers to support more than a handful of CC-compatible models, resulted in a very slow rate of adoption.

But CableLabs and MSOs hadn’t given up yet. Their ‘next big thing’ would be a bi-directional version of CableCARD, allowing a greater degree of interactivity and the ability to get video-on-demand – something the original CableCARD platform couldn’t do. To differentiate this new feature, they called it ‘tru2way.’

Tru2way made a big splash at the Consumer Electronics show when it was first introduced a couple years back with Panasonic and Samsung. According to company representatives, tru2way sets were going to sell fast.

Then came connected TVs. While tru2way was a proprietary solution for customers who wanted box-free digital cable reception, connected TVs were an open platform that anyone could tie into an Internet connection and access videos from YouTube, Netflix and other sources.

It’s telling that not a single TV manufacturer showed a tru2way set this year (or last, for that matter) at CES. The mad rush to 3D had something to do with that, however the realization that broadband-connected TVs were inexpensive to manufacture and could be used by just about anyone with an Internet connection sealed the deal.

Why spend all that money to develop an expensive media delivery platform, when a simple Ethernet port meant that ANY customer could use that TV to get content on demand, or stream it.

As it turns out, customers aren’t clamoring at all to get rid of the set-top box. There are still plenty of them out there, most equipped with a hard drive for time-shifting programs. And from a maintenance standpoint, it makes more sense to keep the DVR separate from the TV anyway. (Ask LG sometime about how well their DVR-equipped plasma HDTVs worked out.)

From the looks of things, it appears interest in tru2way has waned within the cable industry. At the Cable Show last year, there was an entire tru2way Developer’s Conference, run by CableLabs. But this year? One lone seminar on the topic.

Is tru2way the way? It’s not looking so true now.