set-top boxes (STBs) and TV devices, and includes an "innovative" interactive program guide.
The platform is scalable to support both current-technology thin client STBs to future-generation devices, providing a "consistent consumer experience," Microsoft said. Set-top client devices currently supported by the new Microsoft TV Foundation are said to include Motorola's DCT1700, DCT2000, DCT2500, DCT5100, and DCT6000 family of "advanced interactive" STBs. In addition, Concurrent Computer, MetaTV, Two Way TV, Advanced Digital Broadcast, Sigma Designs, National Semiconductor, and selected application developers are working with Microsoft TV to develop future products and technologies for digital television, Microsoft said.
Delivering services to low-end STBsMicrosoft TV Foundation Edition is a software layer targeting cable operators with tens of millions of installed low-end STBs, which have highly constrained hardware resources -- typically, processing performance on the order of 15 MHz with as little as 1MB of memory.
Microsoft's
advanced solution, called Microsoft TV Advanced, targets high-end STBs with processing performance on the order of 100 MHz and 8-32MB of memory, and includes a full software stack including the embedded operating system (Windows CE), a TV graphical user interface (GUI) layer, and other specialized middleware for delivering content and services to an interactive set-top box TV environment. In contrast, the new Microsoft TV Foundation Edition is designed to sit on top of a low-end STB's
proprietary embedded operating system which, in the case of the Motorola DCT family, is "GI OS" -- a name which reflects the DCT STB family's origin as products of a General Instruments STB business unit that was acquired by Motorola.
In recent years, cable operators have scaled back from their earlier "advanced" set-top box aspirations during the Internet bubble, making do with lower-end devices that can deliver basic TV services to consumers. Unlike the advanced "interactive TV" capabilities of advanced STBs with built-in cable modems, such as email and web browsing, the low-end services are inherently one-way (to the consumer) applications which deliver content to what are essentially "thin client" devices.
Seen in this context, Microsoft's TV Foundation Edition is an effort to enhance services that can be delivered to these low-end thin client STBs. Rather than including an operating system, it provides a
framework on which applications can be based -- applications which are said to be portable across multiple STB manufacturers' devices.
Application portability is provided by means of the .NET Compact Framework. Microsoft
announced earlier this month an initiative to have the .NET CLI (common language infrastructure) added to a future version of the CableLabs "Open Cable Application Platform" (OCAP), as a second alternative middleware layer, in addition to Java, for STBs and TV devices.
OCAP is described as "a middleware software layer specification that enables the developers of interactive television services and applications to design such products so that they will run successfully on any cable television system in North America, independent of set-top or television receiver hardware or operating system software choices." The discussions between Microsoft and CableLabs have included ideas of how .NET could extend functionality while maintaining backward compatibility.
About Microsoft TVMicrosoft describes "Microsoft TV" as a family of standards-based client and server software products and related developer tools to enable the delivery of VOD, storefronts, interactive program guides, managed content services, digital video recording, enhanced programming, email, instant messaging and more across a full range of STBs and TV devices.
Information on the Microsoft TV Tools Suite, which includes the Microsoft TV SDK, the Microsoft TV Toolkit for Visual Studio, and the Microsoft TV Virtual TV Environment, is available
here. Other information about Microsoft TV is
here.
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