Hisense Deploys Espial TV Browser in Japan

Wednesday, October 31st, 2012
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OTTAWA, Oct. — Espial (TSX:ESP), a leader in on-demand TV software and solutions, today announced that the Espial TV Browser has been integrated with Hisense TVs. Hisense (600060.SH), the most popular TV brand in China, has recently been gaining traction in markets across the Asia-Pacific region. The Espial TV Browser will initially be deployed on a variety of Hisense TV models in Japan to provide, among other features, support for the country’s Broadcast Markup Language (BML) standard, which enables a rich set of interactive applications and services bundled together with digital TV broadcasts over satellite, terrestrial, or cable networks.

“We are pleased that Hisense has joined the major consumer electronics brands that are deploying the Espial TV browser on their television sets,” said Dilshan De Silva, Espial’s head of browser products. “This latest customer win reinforces our product leadership across various global and regional markets for Smart TVs.”

The Espial TV browser is unique in that it supports dual mode — HTML and BML — from the same high-performance WebKit-based rendering engine also used by Google Chrome and Apple® Safari®. By lowering memory and device resource requirements, the browser s dual-mode capability can dramatically reduce material costs for Smart TV manufacturers.

The Espial TV Browser supports HTML5 and the latest W3C Web and interactive TV standards, comes pre-integrated with Adobe® Flash® 11, and can be easily integrated to various chipsets via a comprehensive software development kit (SDK). Leveraging all of the latest industry standards, including HTML5, CSS 3D, and Canvas, with a high-speed JavaScript engine, the Espial TV Browser delivers compelling content both quickly and efficiently. The browser’s SDK can be integrated seamlessly with middleware media players, video plug-ins, and JavaScript extensions to further enhance the user experience.

The Espial TV Browser includes multiple tabs and visual thumbnails for favorites that allows for a rich user experience by successfully creating the familiar look and feel of a desktop browser. A customized virtual keyboard simplifies on-screen navigation, enabling users to access a variety of personalized applications, such as product menus, social media, interactive advertising, email, chat, and video games.