An application programming interface (API) for managing resources in a Digital Television (DTV) Receiver/Terminal. The API provides a uniform mechanism for gaining/controlling access to resources, managing multiple resources of the same type, and accessing the individual resource's management state and status. The resources may include, for example, a tuner, a modem, a database, a plug-in module, a cable, a software module, a network interface card, or a conditional access module. The resources are monitored and controlled either locally at the terminal, or remotely, e.g., from a head-end or an uplink. The API provides a resource package (40) for registering the available resources at the terminal, a resource state management package (30) for managing states of the resources, and a registry package (20) for storing objects that represent the resources. Resources of the same type are managed as a group.