Cisco has taken a long time dithering over its set top box strategy, but after toying with its fate has decided that it will live on as a smaller species with diminished responsibilities. Like pioneering Telcos such as Deutsche Telekom, Cisco believes that the cloud is the best place to render the UI and host storage if rights allow, but does not share the same vision of the box shrinking into no more than a broadband router serving as a hub merely for connectivity.
Apart from the UI, which can be best rendered in the cloud because it is then easier and faster to deploy enhancements shared by all subscribers, Cisco believes that functions specific to the user are most effectively deployed in a set top or home gateway. These include processing the DVB stack, which will involve interaction with the cloud based UI to manipulate the EPG. The DVB stack is the core software component of a digital TV receiver. It manages the reception of digital broadcast services, presents information on available channels and programs via an Electronic Program Guide (EPG), and ultimately enables the selection of content to watch or record. Under Cisco’s vision the set top would also act as content security hub, serving multiscreen devices with content via the DLNA Premium Video Profile that incorporates DTCP-IP protection. It also includes execution of parental controls, since these are specific to each household.
This vision of the set top as a smaller device which might slot onto a flat screen TV was spelt out recently by Nick Fielibert, CTO, video technology, SP Europe at Cisco. He suggested that these new set tops would more closely resemble handheld devices owned by the user, such as smart phones and remote controls, and would effectively be thin clients linked to servers hosted in the cloud. But they would also be capable of running software independently via an open source Linux application framework.
Such software would in some cases be provided by the pay TV or broadband operator that supplied the set top, in particular for delivery and processing of metadata. Such metadata might drive second screen applications, since companion devices like smartphones, tablets and hybrids are the best suited for display of ancillary information programs, for social network interaction and also for accessing some interactive service components like targeted or long form ads.
But it also includes third party apps, which are becoming a sort of necessary evil for broadband and pay TV operators to support, but perhaps would rather not, since it opens the door to rival suppliers. Operators also need to ensure that such apps do not interfere or compete for resources with primary Internet and video services. On this front the OSGi (Open Services Gateway initiative) is emerging as a key player as a foundation for several emerging platforms relating to the smart home, embedded devices and the Internet of Things.
It is providing the framework platforms that will enable coexistence and interoperability between software components running in the home gateway and also embedded in low power devices. OSGi underpins the HGI (Home Gateway Initiative) document called Requirements for Software Modularity in the Home Gateway, which specifically addresses operators’ requirements for remote deployment and execution of modular software. It ensures that such third party components run in a dedicated virtual execution environment in order to avoid conflicts and interference with the software deployed and controlled by the operator, for Internet access and pay TV services.
One important platform emerging around OSGi is the Home Automation Bus (openHAB) project, which is aiming for universal integration of applications in home automation. It is written purely in Java, because of the language’s ubiquity for web applications and relative independence from the underlying hardware. OpenHAB is designed to enable coexistence between different protocols that will be used by software embedded in low power devices within the home, such as Zigbee and Z-Wave.
OpenHAB looks like becoming an important technology for integrating home automation components and therefore will loom increasingly on the radar for broadband service providers. Launched mid 2012 it got off to a slow start and generated little interest outside the immediate automation community, largely because it only addressed the KNX protocol designed for communication within intelligent buildings, which in turn only supported wired standards such as twisted pair, powerline and Ethernet. As such it was only really of use for new buildings, but KNX now supports wireless communications as well, while the latest version of OpenHAB embraces other automation standards and has attracted particular interest in Germany. There it is integrated with a radio based platform operating at 868 MHz called Homematic, capable of communicating with a wide range of sensors and actuators for automated operation of blinds, heating systems, locks and other components. This is leading towards integrated home automation services, enabling for example automatic home shutdown when leaving the house, operating locks, heating and environmental control systems all at the click of a key.
OSGi lies at the heart of OpenHAB and plays the key role as a broker reducing software complexity by enabling Java modules to slot together without having to deal with underlying protocols and at the same time operate across systems of all sizes, from the smallest Internet connected embedded components to large scale distributed systems. OSGI is still work in progress with further development needed, for example to ensure that transactions run consistently across all combinations of distributed systems that are compliant with the standard. But meanwhile it is being deployed by key vendors in the gateway arena with commitments to stay compatible with OSGi as it continues to evolve. For example the OSGI platform has been incorporated by two home gateway SoC (System on Chip) makers Lentil and STMicro. The latter’s software is pre-integrated in its set top box SoCs, which are now being positioned as early contenders for smart home boxes adding home energy management, automation and security systems in addition to their usual role distributing multimedia content.
OSGi is being adopted by Cisco among others for deployment of third party apps on its platform. It underlies its Linux/Java based Application Extension Platform (AXP) for which Cisco is encouraging developers to adopt OSGi as the most suitable, component-oriented platform for Java-based software development.
OSGi may not become as widely known as say DLNA as a standard platform, partly because it will often be buried within other frameworks, such as the Eclipse 3.0 Java based Integrated Development Environment. But as Cisco noted, the Eclipse framework for supporting Java plug-ins to enable customization and third party app deployment relies on OSGi. As such OSGi is evolving to become another ‘universal middleware’, in this case to support the packaging, version control, deployment, publication and discovery of software in the cloud from a gateway or set top. It is therefore central to Cisco’s vision of the future thin, but smart and flexible set top.