OpenTV

Not to be confused with Open IPTV Forum.

OpenTV

Type	Private
Industry	Digital television
Fate	fully owned subsidiary of the Kudelski Group
Founded	1994
Headquarters	Cheseaux, Switzerland, OpenTV based in San Francisco, USA
Products	Television operating systems, middleware, TV User Interface, and advertising
Revenue	$120 million (for the year ended on December 31, 2009)
Owner	Kudelski Group
Number of employees	600
Parent	Kudelski Group
Website	www.nagra.com/dtv/

OpenTV or OpenTV Connectware is a software platform product line within the Nagra Digital Television Products & Services offering.^[1]

OpenTV is a global software technology company for interactive and digital television. OpenTV was founded in 1994 through the merge of Thomson Multimedia and Sun Microsystems. Its primary business involved the sale of set-top-box operating systems and middleware software as well as advanced advertising products, and on March 28, 2010 OpenTV became a fully owned subsidiary of the Nagra Kudelski Group - Nagravision (or Nagra Kudelski) - and OpenTV as a company was delisted from the NASDAQ, where it had been listed under the symbol OPTV.^[2]

OpenTV Middleware - Broadcast & Digital Television Platform

OpenTV's flagship product is OpenTV (formerly known as OpenTV Core), a widely deployed digital television middleware. OpenTV 2.x software technology contains a hardware abstraction layer to enable hardware independence, TV libraries, a broadcast stack (DVB-T/DVB-C/DVB-S, ISDB, ATSC...), a selection of application execution environments, and Personal Video Recorders (PVRs) to create a digital television environment for set-top box.

Nagara offers OpenTV 2 middleware bundled with the award winning nX2 guide and user interface with their Quickstart solution.^[3]

OpenTV 2 middleware has shipped more than 160 million set-top boxes worldwide. It passed the 100 million mark in February 2007.^[4] The OpenTV 2 middleware was deployed at BSkyB (UK), Sky Italia (Italy), Digital+ (Spain), Télévision Par Satellite TPS (France), Numericable (France), EchoStar (USA), Bell ExpressVu (Canada), Foxtel (Australia), Austar (Australia), Sky New Zealand (New Zealand), Showtime (Saudi Arabia), Evision (Dubai), Cablecom (Switzerland), Euskaltel (Spain), Auna (Spain), StarHub (Singapore), TrueVisions (Thailand), Viasat (Nordic), HOT (Israël), Net Serviços de Comunicação (Brazil), Zee Dish TV of Essel Group (India), TV Cabo (Portugal), Cabovisão (Portugal), Digiturk (Turkey), Etisalat (UAE), NTV-Plus (Russia), Liberty Global UPC Broadband (Europe), Nova (Greece), DStv (South Africa), among many other pay-TV operation globally

OpenTV 2 was ported on more than 40 different types of television set-top boxes such as the one from Pace, ADB, Amstrad, Daewoo, EchoStar, Grundig, Humax, Hyundai, Matsushita, Motorola, Nokia, Philips, Sagemcom, Samsung, Cisco/Scientific Atlanta, Sony, Toshiba and Thomson (now Technicolor).

OpenTV Virtual Machine Execution Environment

OpenTV applications are written in C, using the compiler, gcco, which outputs o-code, which is then run on many set-top boxes. The OpenTV API wraps all the hardware functions, including data transmission (one-way satellite broadcasts, full bi-directional links such as a modem or hard-wired serial port and high-speed broadband networks).

The OpenTV 2 SDK is available on the NAGRA OpenTV Application Community web site.

OpenTV 4 Middleware - Internet Streaming Platform

OpenTV 4 client middleware leverages the Linux OS capabilities.^[5] It supports HTTP Live Streaming (also known as HLS) adaptive streaming with NAGRA PRM for secure over-the-top delivery of both live and On Demand content. The software was deployed at Jazztel in Spain in Q4 2011.

OpenTV 5 Connectware - Media Convergence Platform

NAGRA Connected Home Demo at IBC 2014 in Amsterdam. From left to right on the screens Starhub, NET and Telefónica UIs running on OpenTV 5 platform

OpenTV 5 is a television and media convergence platform.^[6] The multi-services connectware solution allows to abstract television & media services across devices (e.g. Set-top box, Residential gateway, Television), within the home-cloud, as well as bridge broadcast environment with IP based internet services ^[7] It is built on the Linux kernel operating system and internet technologies, such as HTML5 and SVG, combined with core digital television components. The product is designed for portability, modularity, and security. It includes a broadcast and service information (SI) stack (DVB-T/DVB-C/DVB-S, ISDB) with an advanced digital video recorder (DVR) and home networking module (Digital Living Network Alliance - DLNA) for sharing media content across the home, while enabling Internet video with adaptive bitrate streaming capabilities (Progressive download, HTTP Live Streaming, Microsoft Smooth Streaming). The solution also supports on demand (Video on demand) and IPTV.

The middleware components are implemented as Linux services, each in a separate process. It uses standard Linux for inter-process communication (via D-Bus), which insulates services and facilitates adding third party modules. This enables television service operators to quickly deploy applications using industry standard tools and programming languages without any fear that new applications will interfere with their core TV services or network infrastructure. OpenTV 5’s porting interface abstracts the driver interface, and reduces the complexity of driver development.

In addition to the SVG/HTML environment and TV centric API (CCOM), OpenTV 5 provides a JavaScript application framework (JSFW) for rapid UI and business logic development.^[8] The framework offers libraries to accelerate common tasks such as UEX menus / branding, Service Delivery and back-office integration, PVR management, VOD portal listings, or online community access. OpenTV 5 is performance optimized for embedded television systems and can scale from a thin TV set-top-box devices up to a residential gateway solution.^[9]

STMicroelectronics was the first to announce availability of OpenTV 5 drivers for the STi7105 and STi7108, Orly, Cannes, Liege and ST's latest-generation powerful broadband system-on-chip IC. Broadcom has also developed and deployed OpenTV 5 solutions on a wide range of their SoC families (e.g. on BCM7356, 7231, 7425, 7430, 7435, 7445, 7251/7252, 7383/7384…). OpenTV 5 drivers are available to hardware manufacturers through the SoC vendor.

OpenTV 5 has won numerous awards including the “Best Middleware & CPE” at the Connected World TV Awards at the 2012 IBC conference in Amsterdam.^[10]

OpenTV 5 has launched in various regions including Latin America where it has been deployed on the Telefónica network along with other NAGRA Pay-TV service solutions.^[11]

Gravity Guides

NAGRA's GRAVITY ULTRA HD UI demo at IBC 2014 in Amsterdam

Nagra also offers their Gravity Guides^[12] product portfolio in conjunction with OpenTV 5.^[12] Gravity guide and navigation is video centric, uses minimal design, and is based on menu structure with consistent navigation.

Gravity Ultra is an optimized Ultra high definition television (4K) media user interface leveraging HTML5 and OpenGL. The Product is build on top of the OpenTV 5 platform and offers new navigation schemes to content discovery and consumption.^[13]

During the latest IBC conference Gravity Ultra was presented for public viewing. Key features include new ways of discovering content, the possibility of eliminating traditional grid EPGs and a new integration of social features ^[14]

OpenTV Advertising

In October 2011, NAGRA acquired Sigma Systems’ SCTE-130 Subscriber Information Service platform (SIS) business for response management and audience qualification as to deliver customized messages to the audience.^[15]

The EclipsePlus line of campaign management solutions schedule more than 100 million spots per month, and manage some $2.5 billion of annual advertising revenue (March 2012).^[16]

On October 31, 2014, Imagine Communications Corp. acquired OpenTV's advanced advertising systems from the Kudelski Group,^[17] including EclipsePlus, Eclipse/xG Billing, Eclipse/xG Insights and Participate.^[18] Imagine Communications has added the products to its portfolio of media management software for advanced advertising, traffic and billing.

References

External links

Official website

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