Ocean Blue to Offer Solution for HD Interactive TV on DTT

--Company also Integrates Technologies with STMicrosystems, MediaTek

Bristol, UK-based digital TV software provider, Ocean Blue,
announced earlier this month that it will shortly be releasing what it
claims is the first digital terrestrial television solution to support
high-definition interactive TV services. According to the company, the
solution uses the enhanced graphics capabilities of HD-ready
televisions during red-button sessions to provide consumers with an
enhanced viewing experience. The solution is based on the latest
version of Ocean Blue's Voyager MHEG-5 software, which it says will
be available in early summer and will comply with new HD
specifications that were finalized last month by the Digital Television
Group, the industry association for DTV in the UK (note: Ocean Blue
claims to have been involved in numerous DTG working groups tasked
with defining standards): the HD MHEG-5 profile introduces the use of
JPEG bitmaps, AAC audio (streams and clips), and improved color
map definitions in order to enhance the visual and audio experience.
Ocean Blue says that additional changes to graphics have been made, in
order to ensure that any upscaling of standard-definition MHEG
applications to HD generates a high-quality image on HD graphics
plains. As is the case with all enhancements to the Voyager software,
Ocean Blue says, the new HD solution is based on adding software
interfaces to the existing API: the company claims that, by maintaining
the existing API and only adding relevant functionality, it ensures that
its existing customers will "require minimal effort to update and
integrate; whilst new customers benefit from integrating a mature and
stable software solution."

Ocean Blue bills its Voyager platform as a DVB-based MHEG-5
interactive middleware system that is ready for integration into digital
televisions and set-top boxes. Its MHEG-5 engine allows set-tops and
iDTV's to receive digital interactive terrestrial television transmissions
from DVB-S, T or C broadcasters. The company supplies a DSM-CC
data carousel as part of Voyager MHEG-5; it says that support for HD
platforms with and without MPEG-4/H.264 capabilities is included in
the new release. Voyager MHEG-5 and DSM-CC were originally
developed by Philips Electronics, from which Ocean Blue has acquired
the sole development and worldwide distribution license.

In other Ocean Blue news:

• The company has teamed with STMicrosystems on a solution that it
  says will enable "the first devices able to receive mobile TV in a
  mixture of broadcast standards." The solution, consisting of Ocean
  Blue's Azure TV software running on STMicrosystems' Nomadik
  platform, will offer support for DVB-H, DVB-T and DVB-SH, the
  company says. In addition to supporting multiple standards, the
  Azure-Nomadik solution will also be able to receive DVB-SH
  broadcasts, Ocean Blue claims: DVB-SH is a new standard for satellite
  broadcast to handheld devices that allows satellite TV to be received on
  the move, without the need for a dish, thus bypassing the bandwidth
  and country-border restrictions associated with terrestrial broadcast.
  Ocean Blue bills the new Azure-Nomadik solution as allowing
  consumers "to take their mobile devices to any country operating
  digital TV and be able to view TV, whether it be from DVB-H, -T and,
  when available, -SH transmission." "A universal media receiver in a
  portable device makes complete sense," Ocean Blue CEO, Ken Helps,
  said in a prepared statement. "Owners will be able to enjoy mobile TV
  no matter where they are. Previous systems have simply stopped
  working at country borders, meaning mobile TV hasn't really been
  portable before. The introduction of mobile satellite TV will hopefully
  do away with the other mixture of standards: until then this
  multi-standard system will pick up all broadcasts." According to Ocean
  Blue, the Azure-Nomadik solution will allow designers to easily
  develop multimedia applications for such devices as portable media
  players, smart phones, wireless PDA's, Internet appliances and in-car
  entertainment systems. According to STMicroelectronics, in addition to
  supporting mobile TV reception, the Nomadik STn8815 application
  processor enables devices to play back Web content, capture
  high-resolution pictures, record HD video clips and play 3D immersive
  games. It is based on the company's distributed-processing architecture.
• The company says that it has completed a joint project with
  system-on-a-chip provider, MediaTek, to integrate its Voyager
  MHEG-5 and DSM-CC software with the latter's DVB platform, the
  MediaTek MT533x series. The integration is designed to enable
  devices based on the platform to support red-button interactive TV
  applications, such as tcommerce, voting and video stream selection.
  The MT533x series consists of a DTV backend decoder and a TV
  controller and is billed as offering high-level integration for advanced
  applications. As a result of the companies' collaboration, it will be
  supplied with DVB-T software and Ocean Blue Voyager MHEG-5 and
  DSM-CC v1.06 as a complete solution for integrated digital television
  manufacturers. "The addition of Ocean Blue Software's MHEG-5 suite
  will give our customers a broader platform for development,"
  MediaTek VP, Eric Hsu, said in a prepared statement. "With it, they
  will be able to deploy richer applications within DVB-T, including
  revenue-generating content."