itvt

–Secures Push-VOD Deal with Norway’s RiksTV
–Launches Quick Porting Kit
–Secures First Deployment of its Interactive Blu-ray Platform
–Secures MHP Middleware Deal with TV Manufacturer, Vestel

Interactive TV software company, Osmosys (note: the company, which is part of the ADB Group, specializes in Java-based ITV solutions, such as MHP and OCAP), has generated a fair amount of news over the past few weeks:

• The company says that Norwegian digital terrestrial television (DTT) operator, RiksTV, has selected its push-VOD solution. RiksTV, which is owned by a consortium comprised of NRK, the TV2 Group and Telenor, launched a linear-TV service in September, 2007, and claims to have since attracted nearly 250,000 customers. At launch, its new VOD service offers a line-up of SD programming, but is slated to offer HD content in the near future. Osmosys bills its push-VOD platform as offering a bandwidth-independent means of distributing any kind of digital content; as being able to work with any conditional access system; as being middleware-agnostic; and as being available for satellite, cable, and IPTV as well as terrestrial deployments. The company also says that it allows content to be made available to viewers in the form of customized catalogs, via different payment methods, including pay-per-view and subscription. In addition, the push-VOD solution is integrated with Osmosys’ EGG product: the latter is billed by the company as a graphics library that allows video content creators and designers to provide interactive TV graphics with fluid motion, 3D effects and a suite of animation effects on platforms that were previously restricted to 2D graphics. In addition to its client application, Osmosys’ push-VOD system includes a system server that stores and plays video content and is controlled by the company’s Push VOD Manager solution. According to Osmosys, the latter allows operators to manage program descriptions, control bitrates, schedule events, control disk space usage, monitor file transfer status and monitor DVR status.
• The company has launched a Quick Porting Kit (QPK) to facilitate deployment of its interactive TV middleware and applications on hardware manufacturers’ designs. According to the company, the QPK consists of the source code for a complete, optimized port by Osmosys to the standard hardware reference designs available from semiconductor manufacturers. This, the company says, means that hardware manufacturers only need to modify the drivers for any hardware changes from the reference design, and no longer need to implement a complete port. “Middleware porting is a perceived burden for many of our customers,” Osmosys CTO, Paul Bristow, said in a prepared statement. “They have asked us to make it easier, and we are therefore giving them exactly want they want. The demands on today’s digital products are getting higher and higher. We see the demand to add more functionality into our software, but we can’t afford to make that harder and harder to implement on a set-top box. As we use the same porting layer for any flavor of our middleware, the Osmosys QPK is applicable to our tru2way, BD-J, GEM-IPTV and MHP products. In addition, it means Osmosys can now service more customers simultaneously, effectively freeing manufacturers’ timelines from development constraints.” Osmosys says that the QPK is available immediately for manufacturers using ST Microelectronics’ ST 7100, 7101 and 7109 chipsets and will shortly be available for the new 7105. It also currently supports the Broadcom BCM7400 and BCM7401 family of chipsets, and is slated to support the BCM7405 family in the future. The company says that support for other chipsets will be added according to demand.
• The company and its partner, Hitachi Software Engineering (HitachiSoft), have announced the first commercial deployment of their integrated interactive Blu-ray software platform. The solution has been embedded onto chipsets from Renesas and will be used in a new product for the US market, the companies say. The Osmosys-HitachiSoft platform is billed by the companies as combining proven core middleware with CE-embedded software to enable a high- performance and quality interactive Blu-ray HD experience, when coupled with Renesas’ Blu-ray chipsets: Renesas’ system-on-a-chip creates a complete reference design for Blu-ray players and is available for any CE vendor. “Osmosys has developed a superior BD-J middleware engine, and by adopting the HitachiSoft embedded software product, CE manufacturers can dramatically reduce the development cost for interactive Blu-ray applications,” Fujisaki Kazuhiro, group executive at HitachiSoft, said in a prepared statement. “At an early stage, Osmosys realized the potential for innovative interactive applications that Blu-ray could provide. Having championed the format from the beginning, the company has used its experience and expertise to develop a robust and reliable BD-J engine on which to integrate our software. We are delighted with this deployment and look forward to continuing our strong relationship with Osmosys in the future.” Key features of Osmosys’ BD-J engine, according to the company, include: platform independence (the engine uses the Osmosys Platform Independent Layer, which the company claims isolates the high-level software from the lower-level drivers, allowing porting to multiple hardware solutions); robust implementation (the engine is built from existing GEM source code which Osmosys says has been tried and tested in the ITV market since 2002); and support for “next-generation” products (the company says that the same porting layer can be used to build products providing any combination of Blu-ray, MHP, OCAP, DVR, multiroom DVR, IPTV and home networking capabilities).
• The company says that TV manufacturer, Vestel, has selected its MHP middleware and its Navigator software to power its integrated digital television sets. The deal marks Osmosys’ first full integration into iDTV sets. Vestel plans to launch Osmosys-powered devices in the Italian DTT market and plans to expand into other European countries in the future. The company, which is the largest TV manufacturer in Europe (it accounts for around 25% of that market), offers products under its own brands and under the brands of such companies as JVC, Hitachi, Sharp, Sanyo, and Toshiba. “We are very pleased to be deploying Osmosys’ Java-based middleware and Navigator application on our iDTV’s so that they can be truly interactive, further improving the quality and experience for our customers,” Vestel’s deputy managing director, Ugur Savas, said in a prepared statement. “We selected Osmosys due to the high levels of performance and reliability that its solutions demonstrate, as well as the attraction of being able to draw upon its many years of expertise and leadership in the digital television software space.” Osmosys bills its MHP middleware as providing a complete, open broadcast software solution for digital receivers and as offering a host of enhanced features to enable ITV services. The Osmosys Navigator operates with the middleware to provide an interface for digital receivers: according to the company, it can be easily customized for specific needs “without changing a line of code,” and can also be customized to match existing products in a given product range.