Set Top Box

This paper discusses new technologies in communication systems and particularly the new systems for transmitting audio and video data, which switch from analog to digital principle. The number of digital channels transmitted through satellites increased every day. The trend in the near future is for replacement all the analogue TV and Radio broadcasting with digital one. To unify the implementation of dynamic interactive systems, middleware kernels will be built-in in such systems, as some of these kernels are Open TV and MHP allowing integration of Java virtual machine, TCP/IP stack, browser and etc.

Abstract—Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access is an emerging wireless access networks offering high data rates and good range. These features, in addition to moderate installation and maintenance costs, make it an appealing last-mile delivery net-work for IPTV and ...

Users at home and outside will be accessing the Internet increasingly from information appliances such as PDAs, cell phones, and set-top boxes. These devices do not have the same rendering capabilities (display size, color depth, screen resolution, etc.) or network connectivity as traditional desktop clients, and therefore, content must be modified, or transcoded, for proper display on those devices. Advances

Video communication in present multimedia networks is generally prone to transport stream packet-loss error that is manifested as annoying visual artifact in the decoded video signal. The packet-loss error is generally due to noise and signal attenuation in the transport medium, which introduces errors in the modulated digital packetized signal. A case of special interest related to this issue, at which this paper is targeting, is digital broadcasting network and Digital TV receiver as the end application. At the receiver side, the DTV set performs demodulation and evaluates the errors in the incoming transport stream by a parametric model, based on which it decides whether to display the damaged video or simply acknowledge "no signal" state with black screen or frozen video. In order to test DTV set functionality in terms of detecting perceived packet-loss errors and correct switching between a "correct" signal mode (when no video degradation is present) to a "no signal" mode (when video degradation is detected), we propose an embedded system and a novel method for packet-loss detection based on decoded image information. The proposed system is highly efficiently implemented on a INTEL Quad Core platform with a simple connection to the TV set (under investigation) via CVBS. This facilitates easy usage of the proposed test system on different geographical locations, within the broadcast network, with the same type of the DTV sets in order to reliably verify their functionality under different network conditions. The proposed system comprises of a novel algorithm module for packet-loss error measurement, based on which the DTV functionality is assessed. The results indicate high sensitivity of the algorithm to packet-loss error with satisfying robustness against various video sequences with different image content.

We envision the next generation set-top box to be a communications and control device that serves as the residential gateway between an external broadband communication channel and an internal home network. This broadband residential network, as a whole, represents various services (such as cable programming, or games or other software available on the Internet, or a broker of such services)

The design and the implementation of software for mobile computers and for pervasive computing environments entail several issues and lead to new requirements. Applications must handle at run-time the heterogeneity of delivery contexts in terms of devices features, network bandwidth, input and output modalities, operating systems, and so forth. In this paper, we propose a practical approach for enabling platform independent application development and on-the-fly generation of user interfaces based on object introspection and device adaptation.

Summary Today in the market we find large number of database applications designed according to the need of individual user. A database needs to be fast and reliable, besides that it should be compact and portable too. Nowadays devices require some new kind of databases which consume less amount of memory and can be installed easily on devices such as

We present SpeeG, a multimodal speech- and body gesture-based text input system targeting media centres, set-top boxes and game consoles. Our controller-free zoomable user interface combines speech input with a gesture-based real-time correction of the recognised voice input. While the open source CMU Sphinx voice recogniser transforms speech input into written text, Microsoft's Kinect sensor is used for the hand gesture tracking. A modified version of the zoomable Dasher interface combines the input from Sphinx and the Kinect sensor. In contrast to existing speech error correction solutions with a clear distinction between a detection and correction phase, our innovative SpeeG text input system enables continuous real-time error correction. An evaluation of the SpeeG prototype has revealed that low error rates for a text input speed of about six words per minute can be achieved after a minimal learning phase. Moreover, in a user study SpeeG has been perceived as the fastest of all evaluated user interfaces and therefore represents a promising candidate for future controller-free text input.

Video processing algorithms found in complex video appliances such as television sets and set top boxes exhibit an interdependency that makes it is difficult to predict the picture quality of an end product before it is actually built. This quality is likely to improve when algorithm interaction is explicitly considered. Moreover, video algorithms tend to have many programmable parameters, which are traditionally tuned in manual fashion. Tuning these parameters automatically rather than manually is likely to speed up product development. We present a methodology that addresses these issues by means of a genetic algorithm that, driven by a novel objective image quality metric, finds high-quality configurations of the video processing chain of complex video products.

In this paper, the implementation of a digital signal processor (DSP) based H.264 decoder for a multi-format set-top box is described. Baseline and Main profiles are supported. Using several software optimization techniques, the decoder has been fitted into a low-cost DSP. The decoder alone has been tested in simulation, achieving real-time performance with a 600 MHz system clock. Finally, it has been integrated in a multi-format IP set-top box using a commercial development board based on the DSP @ 600 MHz. Tests in a real environment have been performed using this board with good results.

The usability of remote controls for home entertainment systems like TV sets, set-top boxes, satellite receivers and home entertainment centers has reached overstraining complexity: about eight to ten remote controls with about sixty to eighty push-buttons each are typical for a home entertainment system setting today. To be able to harness the ever growing remote control interaction complexity, we propose

ABSTRACT The explosion of user generated data along with the evolution of web 2.0 applications (e.g. social networks, blogs, podcasts, etc.) has resulted in a tremendous demand for storage. With cloud computing posing as a possible all-in-one solution, "storage clouds" focus on providing distributed storage capability. We discuss the creation of a storage cloud using edge devices, based on Peer-to-Peer resource provisioning. In this approach, mobile phones, PCs/Media Centers, Set-top-boxes, modems and networked storage devices can all contribute as storage within these storage clouds. Combining all end-user edge devices may result in a scalable, very flexible storage capability that keeps the data comparatively close to the user, increasing availability, while reducing latency. This work addresses the issue of Quality of Service (QoS)-aware scheduling in a P2P storage cloud, built with edge devices by designing an optimization scheme that minimizes energy from a system perspective and simultaneously maximizing user satisfaction from the individual user perspective.