At Cable Congress 2009, due to start on the 18th of March, Virgin Media and Avinity Systems will apparently
be demonstrating "next-generation user experiences," whatever they are.
Via Media UK's TV Twitter feed.
Quoting part of Avinity's press release:
Quote:
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Avinity’s RenderCast™ platform can bring rich media experiences – such as Flash - to existing customers. The platform is network-based and streams the user interface, enabling interactive services and access to on-demand content over any network to any existing two-way Set-Top Box.
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I'm not sure I'm understanding bits of the developer documentation correctly, but it looks like they're doing something odd with MPEG streams. I want to give a simple explanation, that computers at the headend render the graphics (powered by JavaScript, CSS and some custom XML), composite it with the video stream (if any) and send it to the box just like a normal channel/VOD stream - but there are hints in the documentation that suggest they're doing something different. If anyone knows any better (*cough* spiderplant? *cough*) then I'd greatly appreciate being enlightened.
Avinity, unlike SeaChange (VM's current supplier for the middleware platform) have published what seem to be a reasonably complete set of docs for the platform, and a developer programme that you can actually register for! It's a manually approved process, though, and you can't get the CDK - which appears to include an emulator - without an account. I've registered, so I suppose I'll just have to wait and see - but I'm not terribly hopeful that I'll get approved.
Still, it's exciting to learn that VM *do* seem to realise just how powerful the return path is! Could this be NGTV?
Sam