CableLabs has expanded the horizons of its OpenCable initiative. The project now incorporates defining the software interfaces that unite Docsis-based residential gateways with wireless LANs, Firewire video-distribution links, Bluetooth in-room interconnects or other emerging home network elements. The DSL Forum, FS-VDSL and any other broadband groups hoping to own the home "triple play" of data, voice and video services had better realize how far CableLabs has gone in laying out specs like firewalls and quality-of-service priorities.

But there's one odd region of pseudostandard where Sony Electronics Inc. is proving the temporary good guy, for the lack of any better solution. The conditional-access, or CA, systems developed by Motorola and Scientific-Atlanta are a last bastion of proprietary interface in the home, where companies use their own encryption and transport technology to keep a lock on digital set-top-box designs. At last December's Broadband Plus show, Sony surprised everyone by coming out with a technology called Passage. This selective-encryption system allows cable multisystem operators to use more than one CA system in their networks.

Greg Gudorf, vice president of business planning at Sony, said that the company started its development program more than two years ago, as the only vehicle by which it could hope to enter the closed two-horse world of Motorola and Scientific-Atlanta. The encryption method is applicable to any digital stream, including MPEG-2 or MPEG-4.

Passage has won support from chip set vendors, including Broadcom and Conexant; headend equipment manufacturers, including Cisco Systems, Terayon and BigBand Networks; and CA system specialists like Nagra. Gudorf said that Sony charges a "reasonable and nondiscriminatory" licensing fee for chip or system vendors, and also a small per-unit charge for consumer product vendors. The fee declines as manufactured volumes rise.

Passage, of course, creates unique issues for CableLabs. It can make the digital set-top box a more open device in the home network, but it is based on a single company's technology. Don Dulchinos, vice president of advanced platforms at CableLabs, said the organization is "studying the implications of Passage" to see how it could be integrated into open systems.

Passage might be seen as the home network equivalent of Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Java: Even though one company retains some degree of control, it's a heck of a lot better than the totally proprietary systems of the past.

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