"Avinity and Virgin demo nextgen user experience" (or, finally: Screw you SeaChange!)

[sammyjayuk]

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:

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.

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

[ShadowTD]

This could be a way of implementing what I though were mockups from the investors presentation - the ones with the artwork and search.

It's nice to hear that VM actually have something in development. For the last few years I'd been fairly convinced the R&D spend was £0.

Anyone fancy going to CC09? I reckon VM should treat a CF representative to a visit...

[nialli]

It's this weekend mate...better get your flight booked pronto!

[ShadowTD]

Any news from this? Or, gawd help us, some pics?

[sammyjayuk]

Originally Posted by ShadowTD

Any news from this? Or, gawd help us, some pics?

Sadly, no. Nor have I received any reply from Avinity to my Developer Network signup.

I have found some videos of RenderCast apps, though. The first shows an app for Dutch social network Hyves, while the second, third and fourth seem to be services developed for (what I think is) Dutch bank Rabobank. None are in English, and watch out for the crazy Dutch lady in the third video!

Sam

[Frank]

Originally Posted by ShadowTD

I reckon VM should treat a CF representative to a visit...

Sounds like a plan to me.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Frank

Sounds like a plan to me.

Well volunteered Frank.

[dsmuk]

Has anybody heard anything about this since their demo a few months ago?

[sammyjayuk]

Originally Posted by dsmuk

Has anybody heard anything about this since their demo a few months ago?

Unfortunately, no. Although those of use that got carried away would do well to remember that it was just a demo - apparently these things often fizzle out without a trace.

Having had an opportunity to play with RenderCast, I think that it's a fairly powerful system with some odd restrictions - I somewhat lost interest after discovering that there's no way to make a line break! A lack of any function to predict how many characters of a given string will fit inside a text area is also very limiting.

Avinity have recently been bought by a company called ActiveVideo Networks, although RenderCast will apparently survive.

Sam