Sun Microsystems has brought Java to the television. Developed through the Java Community Process with support from the digital television industry, including Hong Kong Telecom, LG Electronics, Matsushita, Motorola, OpenTV, Philips, PowerTV, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba, Sun hopes that Java TV technology will drive the development and delivery of next-generation content and interactive services for the digital television industry.
At the Western Cable Show currently on at the Los Angeles Convention Centre, strategic partners such as SNAP2, Nielsen Media Research and Picotent are demonstrating interactive television solutions utilising Java TV technology.
SNAP2 is showing a Java TV application suite providing enhanced media for set-top boxes, Nielsen Media Research is demonstrating a software metering system based on Java TV technology, and Picotent is presenting a highly interactive football game.
New types of content enabled by Java technologies will provide consumers the opportunity to participate with the television programme. Interaction could include bidding in TV auctions, playing along with game shows, participating in online voting and polling, as well as e-mail, instant messaging and online chatting.
"[The] shipment of Java TV technology is a testament to the industry support and adoption of open platform solutions for interactive television," says Curtis Sasaki, Sun's director of technology advocacy.
"Solutions shown [at the Western Cable Show] leveraging Java technology will be compliant with television standards all over the world, offering security, extensibility and portability which will ultimately save time and money getting new interactive applications to market."
The Java TV technology shipment includes a finalised specification, reference implementation and test suite.
The Digital Video Broadcasting-Multimedia Home Platform in Europe, the Digital Television Industrial Alliance of China, and CableLabs in the US have all adopted Java technology.
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