Cohen: Comcast's Plant tru2way-Capable By End of Year

Comcast Executive VP David Cohen says the company's plant should be tru2way-capable by the end of the year.

It had been shooting for a July 1 deadline, along with other top operators, but like them missed that deadline, though he told reporters at a press briefing in Washington Monday that Comcast came "awfully close," with an "enormous percentage" tru2way-capable by that date.

tru2way allows cable operators to deliver interactive TV content and applications to compatible devices including TVs and set-tops.

But Cohen also said the ardor for the technology on the Consumer Electronics side appears to have cooled and that there may be the beginnings of rethinking the tru2way model of embedding them in DVR's or $5,000 TV sets when technology is changing so rapidly that they could become outmoded.

He suggested some solutions might be a replaceable chip or downloadable updates.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.