OEDN, the “OCAP/EBIF Developer Network,” reportedly announced the formation of an Academic ITV Software Developer Kit program, with Ball State University as its first participating school.

 

Students at Ball State will have access to OEDN’s Academic ITV Software Developer Kit as part of their curriculum, for the 2009-10 school year. It is a framework for EBIF and Tru2Way application development and testing against industry standard tools and the AISDK allows the select US universities to build applications locally and test them remotely.

 

OEDN has been working in collaboration with manyl ITV companies and partners to make the AISDK available to schools. Partners currently include Ensequence, and the Comcast Media Center HITS AxIS program.

 

“The HITS AxIS program at CMC is looking forward to partnering with OEDN to allow students at Ball State to test interactive television apps against real-world digital cable environments,” said Gary Traver, senior vice president and chief operating officer at the Comcast Media Center (News - Alert).

 

“With OEDN’s orchestration of all the necessary components in the AISDK, a US university student will have the opportunity to take an app from conception to development to test & playout on an actual cable set-top box without the need for an expensive digital cable headend for the very first time,” Traver said.

 

“Ensequence (News - Alert) has long supported university involvement in interactive television, going back to our early ITV days in the United Kingdom,” said Aslam Khader, chief product officer at Ensequence. “We are pleased to contribute the Ensequence Create authoring product to the OEDN AISDK for Ball State. By putting our products in the hands of students, we are helping to provide access for up-and-coming interactive television developers.”

 

Mike Bloxham, a director at the CMC, said that Ball State and the Center for Media Design are excited to participate in the OEDN community.

 

“We look forward to applying our strengths in research, usability and the talent of our students by integrating this project into emerging curriculum that will lead toward new career paths,” Bloxham said.