OPTV,
IBM, OpenTV Combine Technologies to Enhance Television Set-top Boxes
Companies join forces for powerful next generation set-top boxes
EAST FISHKILL, N.Y. & MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Aug 21, 2001 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- IBM (NYSE: IBM chart, msgs) and OpenTV (Nasdaq: OPTV chart, msgs)(Euronext Amsterdam:OPTV), the world's leading interactive television and media solutions company, today announced they have ported and certified OpenTV's interactive television (iTV) software to run on IBM's PowerPC-based set-top-box chips, providing a powerful base for next-generation STB applications.
The two companies are combining the high-performance of IBM's PowerPC microprocessor with OpenTV's leading iTV software, to help service providers build set-top-boxes that deliver new interactive television applications to the home.
"IBM's PowerPC-based set-top-box controllers provide the fastest single-chip speeds in the set-top-box industry," said Eric Tsou, director, Digital Video Products Group, IBM Microelectronics. "By combining that kind of hardware with OpenTV's software, we're giving customers additional performance and programmability for emerging applications. Our range of PowerPC-based standard and custom chips are the engine behind a new class of information services."
The wide reach and number of deployments for the IBM PowerPC-based STB controller and OpenTV's iTV provides an attractive opportunity for application developers.
"OpenTV's iTV middleware solution, now deployed in more than 18.2 million set-top boxes worldwide, offers service providers a reliable and proven solution that is capable of producing rich and interactive content for their customers," said James Ackerman, CEO of OpenTV. "We believe our work with IBM will provide substantial service deployment opportunities on both today's set-top-boxes and tomorrow's next generation systems."
IBM's STB03xxx set-top-box chip family combines a PowerPC processor, an MPEG-2 audio/video decoder, a memory interface subsystem and a range of peripheral interfaces all on a single piece of silicon. The chip features high-speed operation at 162 MHz, with a 16-KB instruction cache and an 8-KB data cache, providing the performance necessary for a range of new services.
OpenTV provides the interactive TV solution, including software, services, and applications. Its client middleware, now in its third generation, seamlessly integrates multiple applications from multiple vendors in the limited set-top resources without costly upgrades.
Set-top-box developers can purchase the IBM and OpenTV products individually from the respective companies immediately.
About IBM
IBM Microelectronics is a key contributor to IBM's role as the world's premier information technology supplier. IBM Microelectronics develops, manufactures and markets state-of-the-art semiconductor and interconnect technologies, products and services. IBM makes chips for a wide range of devices from the world's most powerful computers to the smallest cell phones. Its superior integrated solutions can be found in many of the world's best-known electronic brands. More information about IBM Microelectronics can be found at: www.chips.ibm.com. |
