OCAP specialist, Vidiom Systems, has opened a training center at its headquarters in Broomfield, Colorado (near Denver). The center will be used to host the instructor-led courses that the company offers on OCAP and other open standards, interactive TV application development and Java application development for embedded systems. Vidiom says that the center is outfitted with interactive workstations in order to create a "hands-on" application development and integration environment: each workstation provides access to application development tools, set-top boxes, and connectivity to multiple headends. The center will offer a full schedule of OCAP courses, including Vidiom's OCAP API Essentials course and its new OCAP Application Developer's Workshop. "We started giving our first courses a year ago in area conference centers and the response has been overwhelming," Vidiom's VP of engineering services, Walden Miller, said in a prepared statement. "I am very pleased to say that we have a state-of-the-art home for our expanded training program."
Vidiom's OCAP API Essentials course (September 13th-15th) was the first course to be offered in the new training center. It consists of a three-day technical examination of OCAP middleware, applications, OpenCable Host Devices and network requirements. The company's OCAP Application Developer's Workshop, which will be held at the center next month, is billed as a five-day, computer-based hands-on course that will instruct students on how to build and run OCAP applications using today's tools, set-top boxes and headend infrastructure. Later this year, Vidiom plans to offer Java courses tailored to the cable industry and embedded systems, as well as other specialized OCAP courses. (Note: for more on Vidiom's training courses, which the company stresses are not designed to promote its own products and services, see [itvt] Issue 5.83.)
