NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--OEDN (The OCAP/EBIF Developer Network) announced today that its charter sponsor – Time Warner Cable – has been joined by four additional cable multiple system operators (MSOs) in its efforts to promote interactive television (ITV) application development for digital cable. Those four companies are: Bright House Networks, Cablevision Systems, Charter Communications, and Liberty Global, Inc.

“When we started OEDN in 2007, we recognized the need to build a solid foundation of an ITV developer ecosystem for digital cable – from the bottom-up,” said Will Kreth, Sr. Director of Advanced Video Strategy for Time Warner Cable and founder of OEDN. “To attract developers to the EBIF & Tru2Way (OCAP) platforms, we needed to build bridges with several key stakeholders in the MSO, vendor, programmer, advertiser and university communities."

“The support from these four cable MSOs clearly validates our charter and ongoing mission - which is to broadly socialize the advantages of developing ITV apps for digital cable, and to put the tools necessary to build and test those apps in the hands of a new generation of software development talent.”

OEDN’s new sponsorship will help both improve and expand the reach of the OEDN.net online developer community, develop an international version of the site, as well as seed key US universities with the tools and test environments necessary to take a student’s concept of an ITV application through the real-world steps necessary for it to become a reality. With its new “Academic ITV Software Developer Kit” (AISDK) – OEDN has been working with several key ITV companies & partners to provide a way for students to develop & test ITV applications using industry standard tools.

“Over the long-term, digital cable needs to create a robust ITV developer ecosystem from prototype to testing to deployment,” said Jeff Chen, SVP, Advanced Technology at Bright House Networks. “Through our support of OEDN, we seek to accelerate the development cycles and bring new ITV applications that consumers want to the market.”

“OEDN represents a collaborative effort to broadly socialize what it takes to build applications for ITV,” said Rich Neill, SVP of Software Technology for Cablevision Systems. "We are pleased to participate in this important endeavor.”

“Consumers are becoming more aware of the power and usefulness of interactive apps, whether on a TV, PC or smart phone,” said Doug Ike, VP of Advanced Video Engineering at Charter Communications. “Greater knowledge about development environments for innovative interactive TV applications is the first step toward ubiquity, and Charter is pleased to be part of this effort to stimulate interactive television app development.”

“With the global rollout of Interactive TV services, we see the OEDN effort as being key to application developers,” said Bill Warga, VP of Technology at Liberty Global, Inc. “As an international MSO, we bring collaboration from Liberty Global’s operations in 15 countries across 3 continents, including Japan’s largest MSO, J:COM, which will participate through the upcoming Japanese language version of the oedn.net website (oedn.net/ja).”

OEDN welcomes the participation of all four companies as they join us in our efforts, and look forward to working with them and other partners for the greater good of ITV app development on digital cable.

About OEDN

Founded in 2007 and sponsored by five of the leading cable MSOs, the mission of the OCAP/EBIF Developer Network (OEDN) community is to drive awareness of and application development efforts using the two primary interactive cable television open standards for middleware: OCAP (known to consumers as tru2way) and EBIF. Through its developer network website, oedn.net and via other well-known social networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook, OEDN aims to broadly socialize the advantages of developing interactive apps for digital cable, and to bring a new generation of software development talent to the cable industry.