Software (Media Players, Middleware, Browsers, Stacks, …) News

ContentWise and Babeleye bring personalization to Middle East and Africa
Aug 27, 2015 – ContentWise has partnered with Babeleye to bring personalized TV experiences to the Middle East and Africa. Babeleye’s metadata platform is integrated with ContentWise’s Personalization System and Knowledge Factory metadata processing engine.
News categories: ContentWise, Babeleye, Paolo Bozzola, Lasse Schmidt, Africa, Big Data, Digital TV, IBCShow, Middle-East, UX

Opera TV debuts HbbTV 2.0 SDK for TV and STB manufacturers
Aug 27, 2015 – Opera TV will soon start shipping its Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV) 2.0 software development kit (SDK) to TV manufacturers and set-top-box OEMs, enabling them to get to market with HbbTV-2.0-compliant devices.
News categories: Opera TV, HbbTV Association, Frode Hernes, Klaus Illgner, Digital TV, HbbTV, Set Top Box, Smart TV, Worldwide

ALi introduces STB/Sound Bar combo
Aug 26, 2015 – ALi Corporation has added sound bar support to its set-top box chipsets. The solution, to be demonstrated at IBC, combines ALi’s STB chipset, supporting DVB-C/T2/S2 and IPTV video streaming, with streaming music delivery.
News categories: ALi Corp, Dr. Ben Lin, Digital TV, IBCShow, Middleware, Semiconductor, Set Top Box, Worldwide

HGI sets requirements for home network devices
Aug 24, 2015 – The Home Gateway Initiative (HGI) has announced that it has published new requirements for home network devices. The new document extends the current Quality of Service (QoS) architecture already published by HGI, to cover the entire home network.
News categories: HGI, Duncan Bees, Gateway, Middleware, Smart Home, Worldwide

SIXTY announces lightweight STB user interface framework
Aug 24, 2015 – SIXTY has announced the launch of Ease TV, the first product of its Ease by Sixty product line. Ease TV is a fast, strong and lightweight user interface framework for the set-top box market.
News categories: SIXTY, Carl Mathisen, Digital TV, Middleware, Set Top Box, UX, Worldwide

Kudelski reports 2015 half year results
Aug 20, 2015 – The Kudelski Group (SIX: KUD.S) has announced 2015 half year results. The Group entered into several new contracts and completed deployments in the digital TV segment In Europe. Bundles of anyCAST security, OpenTV5 connectware and MediaLive multiscreen are seeing increasing market traction in Asia and Latin America.
News categories: Kudelski, Content Protection, Digital TV, Middleware, Results, Set Top Box, Worldwide

Ruutu HbbTV 1.5 online video service launched in Finland
Aug 13, 2015 – A collaboration between Nelonen Media, Digita and Sofia Digital has brought the online video service 'Ruutu' to the Finnish terrestrial TV network. Viewers tuned to the Digita network with an HbbTV 1.5 activated receiver have been able to use the service since June 24th.
News categories: Nelonen Media, Digita, Sofia Digital, Ruutu, Kai Taka-Aho, Digital TV, Finland, HbbTV, Terrestrial

Cisco working on royalty-free alternative to H.265
Aug 11, 2015 – Cisco has announced that, owing to the high cost of patent licensing for the H.265 codec, it has been working on a project to develop a replacement video codec, codenamed Thor. The company is attempting to avoid or work around the many patents that exist in the field of video codec design.
News categories: Cisco Systems, Thor, Digital TV, Licensing, Media Player, Patent, Worldwide

Virtual Reality Gaming, Smart TVs and Wearables lead to rise in Gesture Sensing Control shipments
Aug 10, 2015 – With emerging virtual reality games, smartwatches, smart TVs and other CE and IT applications entering the market, shipments of gesture sensing control user interfaces are poised to grow 10 percent year over year, to reach 1.8 billion units in 2015.
News categories: IHS Inc, Calvin Hsieh, Market Research, Metaverse, Smart TV, Worldwide