Miniweb has announced a collaboration with Metrological Media Innovations, the Dutch provider of middleware and reference designs, that will offer converged internet and broadband TV services onto Intel CE 3100 powered devices.
Metrological has produced a set-top box using the Intel Media Processor CE 3100, building the circuit board design through to the driver stack and the Metroconnect operating system integrated with the Miniweb platform service. “It means that any interactive environment all now have access to centralised billing, media search and discovery and crucially things like PVR functionality, centralised billing and knowing what channel you’re on, which Yahoo widgets on their own couldn’t handle,” says Ian Valentine, Miniweb’s chief architect and founder.
Valentine says this realises Miniweb’s vision of the close conversion between video and broadband. He adds that the implementation differs from Yahoo widgets because the integration goes all the way down to broadband connectivity and PVR. As a result, it is possible for Miniweb to bridge the gap between the current Freeview and Freesat standards and the pay-TV sector.
“The 2007 trend was all about content owners putting out their own devices. The 2008 trend was about making deals with third party devices, but then the content is restricted to the deals that they’ve done and the devices that they have. But now the 2009 model, be it Canvas, be it Yahoo, is all about intermediaries where you can plug in your content, and anyone that supports the platforms or the services gets access to it.”
