Sony Tru2Way - No more set top boxes

Sony, by far one of the largest manufacturers of Home Theater and other entertainment electronics, in the world, and one of the larger producers of multi-media content has tied up with six of the top cable companies in the United States to use Tru2Way - a technology that eliminates set-top boxes used in cable and interactive service offerings.

Tru2Way (formerly called OpenCable) enables cable companies and other interactive television service and application developers to "write" interactive applications once and see them run successfully on any device that supports the specification. Existing applications include interactive guides, "start over" applications, and games; future applications might include, for example, interactive ads, chat, web browsing, and t-commerce. With tru2way technology, consumers will be able to access two-way digital cable programming without the need for a cable operator-supplied set-top box.

With the adoption of Tru2Way by the likes of Sony, Samsung and other TV manufacturers, these manufacturers could adopt the Tru2way technology directly into their TV sets allowing the cable and content vendors to interact directly with the TV using Java software, rather than through proprietary hardware boxes.

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