Smartware

A fast and cost-effective turnkey STB solution

Turnkey middleware and STB application solutions optimized for cost-effective devices. If time-to-market is a requirement, Smartware is the solution

Smartware combines an outstanding user experience with an impressive list of advanced features which includes EPG, PVR, OTT, HbbTV, HTML5, … and it is has been already certified by major CA/DRM providers such as: Nagra, Irdeto, Playready.

Smartware provides an answer to operators that are looking to deploy a solution in a short time frame on any type of hardware. Offering the best possible user experience for the right value is probably the most important metric operators are measured by. In order to achieve this goal, TeleIDEA Smartware supports two approaches to deliver optimal results for each and every platform, both allowing customization required by the operator.

Native Smartware
Low-end devices (less than 1000 dmips and 256MB Ram memory) are heavily constrained in memory and CPU-cycles. In order to benefit from a smooth and responsive user interface with an advanced feature set (PVR, VOD, HTML5 Widgets), it is recommended to run TeleIDEA’s native Smartware solution. In order to squeeze every cpu-cycle and every bit of memory available, Smartware runs a Linux-based middleware at its base. Optimized for the target platform, this allows astonishing speed and fast responsiveness of the user interface. Taking into account its limited resources the native approach yields the best possible result on low-cost hardware.
User interface development is done using in-house developed authoring tools, guaranteeing a fast time-to-market and flexibility towards change. In addition to that, operators can easily extend functionalities through applications or widgets that run using optimized javascript libraries.

Browser based Smartware
High-end devices have less constraints with respect to memory and CPU usage and therefore allow to run Smartware in an abstracted environment such as a web browser. This allows defining a device independent user interface in HTML5/javascript that can run on the STB, but at the same time can be used on other devices such as smartphones, tablets or PC.
Both native and browser based Smartware solutions can be customized to the operators’ needs, providing the ultimate digital TV experience.
Already today Smartware has a proven track record and has been integrated and certified with most common CA’s such as Nagra and Irdeto, but has also been deployed with more recent DRM solutions like Playready. In spite its ability to run also on boxes with a low memory and CPU footprint, Smartware provides an impressive list of advanced features, including EPG, PVR/network-PVR and VOD services, but also Over-The-Top video and an extensive application store. Having full control over the entire software stack, TeleIDEA can use extensive programming and debugging tools, guaranteeing stable and high quality software in projects where cost and time-to-market are key

Menu Navigation, EPG, PVR, VOD

Smartware supports all traditional STB functionalities such as Menu navigation, EPG, PVR and VOD on a fast, state-of-the art attractive user interface.

Menu Navigation

• Highly responsive user interface
• Rich, animated user experience
• Consistency across multitude of devices
• Optimal use of transparency levels
• Intelligent setup, diagnostics and configuration
• Fast search
• VOD, Catch-Up portals
• Intelligent and transparent recording menu
• Multiple views
• Fast time-to-market
• Customizable User Interface

EPG

• Fast Navigation through the EPG
• Multiple views on the EPG
• Picture-in-graphics
• HDTV Compatible
• Fast predictive search
• Supports up to 30 days of EPG
• Parental Control
• Integrated with social networks (facebook)
• 2D and stereoscopic 3D UI

PVR
PVR functionality works seamlessly together with the EPG application. Scheduling and managing recordings was never so easy. When combining a Gateway STB and one or many IP client devices (see section on advanced modules) you will need to maintain one schedule only. Updates are propagated instantly through the network.
Smartware PVR makes optimal use of the hardware resources, maximizing the user experience.

• Trickmode Support
• Multiple Bookmarks
• Recurring/Series recordings
• Multiple concurrent recordings
• Intelligent and Optimal Resource Management
• Instant predictive search
• Review Buffer
• Parental Control

Video On Demand
Whether it concerns streaming VOD, push VOD, pull VOD services or IP streaming, Smartware has integrated all of them in different kinds of flavors. VOD services are seamless integrated with the other applications and widgets. Share your favorite movie experience with your friends through facebook and jump to recommended movies with just one click of a button.
The Smartware solution is vendor agnostic when it comes down to back-office or video streamer and the application has been integrated with a variety of companies such as EventIS, Cisco, Motorola,…
Video on Demand is integrated both in the native and browser-based Smartware applications , allowing web applications to easily integrate VOD functionality .

• Push/Pull/Streaming/IP-Streaming/Progressive Download
• Multi-protocol support (RTSP, DSM-CC, …)
• Multi-CA Support
• DRM Support
• Trick Play
• Transactional, Free and Subscription VOD
• Instant predictive search
• Support for Promotions and Campaigns (Purchase 2, get three)
• Parental Control
• Integrated with social networks (facebook)
• Multiple Customizable Views (cover-flow, grid, …)
• Previews

Application store and widget framework
Operators can easily extend the applications running on the STB by means of TV widgets. Widgets can be created using HTML, JavaScript and Flash or a combination thereof. The widget framework supports the use of RSS feeds as a simple method to hierarchically structure information containing text, pictures and video. In the Smartware native solution, widgets run in their own mini-browser environment and similar speed and effects as with a native UI can be obtained. Needless to say that the browser-based Smartware solutions has full support for widgets or applications, running in the same full-featured webbrowser as the main user interface.

JavaScript API
Smartware defines a set of JavaScript APIs for TV related features which are used together with HTML to provide a common environment for TV enabled web applications. Features defined are for getting EPG information, metadata information for broadcast as well as content on demand data, recording, time-shift and parental control features, to mention a few. The Smartware API supports multiple standards, including Tru2way, OCAP and HbbTV

Home Gateway
Today’s households tend to have more than one place within the house where they are watching television. In order to make this even more attractive, the same Smartware application can run both on regular STB’s as well as on a cost-effective “thin-client” IP-only STB’s. The IP client STB has the same functionality and speed of a normal STB but only requires an IP connection to the Gateway STB. All the resources of the Gateway STB (tuners, recordings, recording schedule etc.) are shared with the IP-client. As such there is no noticeable difference in functionality between the two types of STB’s and as the resources are shared, the end-user does not have to worry where a recording was made: basically all the content can be watched on any of the users’ devices.

Follow me
An additional feature that is supported within the concept of the multi-screen experience is the “Follow Me” functionality. When the follow me feature is triggered by the user by e.g. pressing the follow-me button on the remote control or in the iPad application, the Gateway STB will mark the time and the program that the user was watching. Subsequently, the user can switch to another device and/or to another place in the house and resume his watching from where he left of by triggering the follow me resume action. A common use case for this feature is when the end-user moves his viewing location from the living-room to the bed-room.