An organization handling digital television (DTV) conversion in Brazil is joining with Sun to develop an open-source content platform based on Java technology for the conversion of television applications and services for the country.

The agreement between Sun and the Forum do Sistema Brasileiro de TV Digital Terrestre (SBTVD) is expected to enable global companies to use Java technology in creating and implementing interactive TV services and interface tools for Brazilian customers by adapting HDTVs and mobile devices to the Brazilian ISDB-T digital TV standard.

The Java specification to be used builds upon the same platform that currently serves as the basis for other digital television standards, including OpenCable/tru2way, Multimedia Home Platform, GEM-IPTV and Blu-ray Disc/BDJ. The specification is being structured to permit implementations of this module, which can be deployed royalty free and without licensing costs.

"Specifications developed around SBTVD follow the philosophy of providing cutting edge technology that offer more capabilities and are available through fair, reasonable, affordable, non-discriminatory policies (FRAND)," commented Roberto Franco, SBTVD Forum president.

The interactive solution will be compatible with the current Brazilian digital TV system middleware offering, known as GINGA, and will provide a low-cost alternative to the technology that is currently available. GINGA is being licensed as a worldwide registered trademark by SBTVD.

"The GINGA standard allows more flexibility in interactive application development by offering a declarative platform, based on NCL, and a procedural platform, based in Java, which both can be deployed royalty free," Franco said. "With this, we can provide the market with an affordable and popular convertor platform featuring powerful interactive resources."

By the year 2016, Brazil will no longer allow analog terrestrial TV transmissions. Reportedly, there are more then 98 million analog TV sets and an additional 120 million mobile devices in Brazil. An important component of the Sun-SBTVD plan is to help ensure that Brazilian citizens at all socioeconomic levels get affordable access to the new ecosystem of interactive services to be provided through the Java technology-based DTV infrastructure.

"...Sun's efforts to drive open source innovation and open standards are proving to be invaluable in helping emerging economies such as Brazil spur innovation and drive down costs on products that have the potential to improve the lives of their citizens," said Crawford Beveridge, executive vice president and chairman, APAC, EMEA and the Americas, Sun. "We hope that our work with SBTVD on developing the first open-sourced national standard of Interactive DTV will serve as a model platform for other emerging countries."

Development around the new platform will take place at: http://www.ginga.org.br [...read more...]

From the latest issue:

Recent Blog Entries as of July 4, 2009, 5:15 pm
'Managing ZFS File Systems in Solaris Containers' Demonstrating Out-of-the-box Performance Gains with memcached-1.3.1 The Father of Java on His Progeny's Future Patch Checked Advanced (PCA) - Solaris OS Patch Management Utility VirtualBox 3.0 Released	Doing a Mobile Install of OpenSolaris and VirtualBox on a Laptop Latest Support and Key Features of Solaris Cluster for SAP NetWeaver Stack Solaris News Bites White Paper: Getting Ahead of The Trend in the Mobility Market Intel Xeon 5500 Processor Series on OpenSolaris, Solaris, and Linux
Blog RSS Feed