Jack Armstrong, OpenTV’s vice president of wireless
strategy, has revealed that the company hopes to
“progressively” rollout Internet-capable versions of its
set-top box middleware starting this year.
It is hoped
that all set top boxes running OpenTV middleware will
have Internet capability “fully integrated and fully
Internet capable within two years,” Armstrong told
Pay-TV Today at the Broadcast@Internet conference
in London.
OpenTV, arguably one of the front runners in set-top
box middleware provision, was until last year fast
becoming one of the few middleware companies not
preparing to offer Internet capability. However, the
company has sought to redress the balance with the
acquisition of Internet browser specialist Spyglass, for
whom Armstrong originally worked.
Asked whether the existing hardware operating the
current versions of OpenTV, which the company claims
runs to around 11 million individual installations, would
be capable of handling the new versions of its
middleware, Armstrong said that it would depend on the
age of the boxes themselves.
As an example, he said that those offered by
BSkyB, which have been regularly replaced would probably only need an
overnight software download to change to operating systems, but those older
boxes operated, for example, by TPS in France, would probably need to be
replaced.
Armstrong said that the concept of old and new in terms of STB’s is
somewhat different from the computer world, in that the average box has a
seven year lifespan, whereas the average computer is out of date within 18
months. Some of TPS’s STBs are getting long in the tooth at around four
years old, and would definitely need to be replaced before they can run the
new middleware versions.