smart tv News - Page 5 of 5 - CNX Software

April 25, 2011April 25, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

ARM Based Android Set-Top Boxes at China Content Broadcasting Network Exhibition

The 19th China Content Broadcasting Network Exhibition (CCBN 2011) took place on March 23 – 25 2011 at the China International Exhibition Center in Beijing. During this event, numerous Android STB were showcased with processors from several vendors. Trident Microsystems PNX8400 Trident Microsystems demonstrated their Cortex-A9 Apollo/Shiner SoC family, the PNX8400, which included all the major building blocks needed to develop Next Generation Broadcasting (NGB) solutions. NGB is a government initiative for smart tv in China. On 24th of March 2011, Trident Microsystems also announced that its STB SOCs were selected for the first trial deployments of NGB in China. LG (LG Smart Box) and Cycle Century demonstrated their Android based cable STB using Trident Microsystems NXP8400. This stb supports DVB, Conditional Access, 1080p video streaming, a browser with an Apps store, 3D gaming and VoIP. To see more about Trident Microsystems Android STB have a look at the video […]

April 18, 2011April 18, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Rockchip RK2918 based Set-Top Box and Laptop

Rockchip RK2919 is apparently being implemented in many tablets such as Arnova 10, but they are also used in STB / media players and Laptops. Rockchip showcased their set-top box reference design at Hong Kong Electronics Fair 2010. Their board features 100MB Ethernet, one USB host port, one HDMI video output and one SD Card connector. The BOM cost is around 50 USD. The reference designs runs Android 2.3 (gingerbread). They also exhibited a laptop based on RK2918 supposedly manufactured by one of their customers running Android 2.3. There are no details specs nor price information available yet. But with an ARM Cortex A8 running at 1.2Ghz it should offer decent performance compared to existing ARM based laptops although I’d rather have Ubuntu preloaded (now optimized by Linaro) than Android on this kind of device. Here’s a video by Charbax (armdevices.net) of this laptop. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software […]

March 16, 2011March 16, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Netgem’s IPTV 2.0 Home Cloud SDK

Netgem announced the release of its “Home Cloud” SDK based on IPTV 2.0 open architecture. Here’s an excerpt from the press release: Paris, France March 15 , 2011 Netgem, an IPTV technology leader, has announced it has made its Home Cloud software development kit (SDK) available to application developers, Internet service providers and operator partners. Netgem is further developing its partner ecosystem to enable third parties to take advantage of its IPTV 2.0 open architecture. This application framework is designed for the development of live and on-demand TV and multimedia applications. Using the open and fully documented APIs telecom operators and their partners can develop their local ecosystem of applications and services to differentiate their offering from competitors. Since Netgem is a pure technology vendor it does not interfere with the economics of the relationship between operators and developers, who are able to share 100% of the revenue. The full […]

March 11, 2011March 11, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

HbbTV: Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV

HbbTV (Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV) is a new European standard for web-based smart TV applications for TVs and set-top boxes. Services and applications delivered via HbbTV include traditional broadcast TV channels, catch-up services, video-on-demand, EPG, interactive advertising, personalisation, voting, games, social networking and other multimedia applications. The latest version of the HbbTV specification is 1.1.1 and can normally be downloaded after registering on ETSI website. The official nomenclature of the specification is ETSI TS 102 796. It is also directly available at the following link – http://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/102700_102799/102796/01.01.01_60/ts_102796v010101p.pdf The HbbTV specification is based on existing standards and web technologies including OIPF (Open IPTV Forum), CEA, DVB and W3C. HbbTV Specifications specifically makes use of the following standards: CEA-2014 – Web-based Protocol and Framework for Remote User Interface on UPnP Networks and the Internet (Web4CE), also known as CE-HTML. Open IPTV Forum Release 1 Volume 5 – Declarative Application Environment of the […]

January 19, 2011January 19, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Android Set-top Box: Bonux HZ20A / HZ20B – ZiiLABS Processors

Bonux, a Taiwan company founded in July 2009, announced two Android 2.2 set-top boxes based on ZiiLABS processors: The Bonux HZ20A and HZ20B. If you can remember Bonux also showcased a 50 USD Android STB earlier on. Here are the specs of the two media players: HZ20A HZ20B OS Android 2.2 CPU Ziilabs ZMS-08 ARM Cortex A8 @ 800 MHz Ziilabs ZMS-05 ARM9 @ 400 MHz RAM 512 MB DDR2 256 MB DDR2 NAND Flash 512MB 256MB Wifi 802.11 b/g/n (Via optional external USB Dongle) Adobe Flash Flash 10.1 FlashLite Video Codecs /Formats MPEG-1/MPEG-2/MPG-4(MP4 & MOV)/DivX(4/5)/Motion JPEG/H.264/WMV9/VC1/Real Video (RMVB – VGA Resolution) Audio Codecs MP3/WAV/WMA/AC3/AAC/OOG Max Resolution/Bitrate 1080p 40 Mbps Subtitles SRT/SMI/SUB/SSA File Systems FAT32 / NTFS(Read-Only) They are not using the default Android user interface, but their own customize UI, which can be a good thing on a TV. Their user interface has the usual Videos, Music, Pictures and […]

January 17, 2011January 25, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

SATA-IO Universal Storage Module (USM) Standard

The Serial ATA International Organization (Sata-IO) announced the Universal Storage Module (USM) standard at CES 2011. This standard mainly defines mechanical characteristics and some electrical specs for hard drives so that they can be connected to devices (PC, laptops, tablets, televisions, media players, set-top boxes…) via a slot without the need to have an extra cable. This also allows a SATA harddisk to be used as a USB harddrive via a standard adapter. Later on this will also support other connection standards such as Firewire. The specifications will only support 2.5″ HDD, not the larger 3.5″. Those specifications are not publicly available yet (Target: 1H 2011) since they are still developing them. In the mean time you can check the FAQ (below) and have a look a the USM presentation slides. Seagate showcased their GoFlex design based on the USM specs where you can see the forum factor of the SATA […]