The digital media industry, long bedevilled by a glut of devices – all seemingly with different looks, functions and feels – may finally be making progress toward compatibility.
The industry has struggled with two technological barriers:
1. Developing a single on-screen interface that can operate multiple devices in the home, something Samsung and others have been trying to get industry agreement on for years.
2. Using one device, say a DVR, media center/server or Blu-ray player, to stream content to and from devices in other rooms, say TV sets or media players.
This week industry giants Broadcom (chips), Cisco (DVRs and home-network gear), DirecTV (the US’ largest satellite TV service) and Samsung (the world’s largest maker of TV sets) announced an alliance called RVU that aims to develop an industry standard Remote User Interface (RUI) that’ll solve both problems.
The goal is to provide an identical user experience on all devices with the RUI, including digital TVs (DTVs), digital media adapters (DMAs) and set-top boxes (STBs).
The RUV would solve the universal interface problem (and we hope they do the same for remote controls as well). Adherence to the DLNA standard provides the multi-device compatibility.
It wants a “pixel-accurate” interface that’s based on existing industry interoperability initiatives. The goal of the RVU technology is to give users the same look and feel on every TV set and for every set’s connected devices. It would also allow users to view HD content on any TV in the home (but presumably only in HD on the HD sets) and to display the user’s personal pictures and videos.
It would also give access to interactive applications like the weather, extra sports information (perhaps stats for fantasy games) and acess content on PCs and media players.
The four companies said the move “underscores” their commitment to the sharing of digital content in the connected home.
DirecTV probably offers the least capability for sharing content on a consumer’s devices of any pay-TV service. And seemingly every DVR it launches has an entirely different user interface and remote control.
In a statement the four said they expect the RVU technology will accelerate the availability of service provider content throughout the connected home.
They said the key industry interoperability initiative is the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA), which all four belong to.
DirecTV CTO R’mulo Pontual indicated that getting RUV-compliant products to market will happen soon. He said his company expects to deploy the RVU technology in media servers [DVRs for sure and, less likely, Blu-ray players] and clients [remote set-top boxes, which may even be built into the TV set] early in 2010.
Rich Nelson, Broadcom’s VP of marketing for its communications group, said it will manufacture system-on-a-chip (SoC) chipsets for set-top boxes, digital TVs and Blu-ray players.
Thomas Rhee, Samsung’s senior VP of digital set-top boxes, said RVU technology would make it easier for all CE makers, including Samsung. He was especially excited about the inclusion of the DLNA standard in the RVU technology.