The Essential Guide To Digital Set-top Boxes And Interactive Tv

Everything you need to know about the coming digital interactive TV revolution!

There's a revolution coming to your TV: a digital, interactive, Internet-enabled revolution that will make possible services you've never imagined! The next TV revolution comes with new technologies, new standards, new architectures, and new business paradigms. Finally, there's a single source for up-to-the-minute insight into every aspect of next-generation digital TV: "The Essential Guide to Digital Set-Top Boxes and Interactive TV!"

From MPEG-4 to middleware, webcasting to Java OS, Gerard O'Driscoll covers the state-of-the-art, comparing the strategies and technologies-and cutting through the hype. Coverage includes all this, and more:

• Digital TV building blocks: compression, encoding, modulation, conditional access, transmission, and management
• Advanced digital set-tops: features, components, installation, and troubleshooting
• Set-top operating systems: JavaOS, Windows CE, David OS-9, PowerTV, VxWorks, pSOS+, Linux, and more
• Internet-based TV: set-top Web browsing, webcasting, email, online chat, broadband applications, video on demand, parental controls, and more
• Electronic program guides (EPGs): 21st century TV portals
• Development, server architecture, middleware, network management, smartcards, MPEG-4, and much more

Whether you're an investor, manager, marketing or PR professional, software developer, or consumer, you need to know where TV is headed, and only one book can show you: The "Essential Guide to Digital Set-Top Boxes and Interactive TV!"

The author explores the various industry initiatives and standard bodies that are defining open set-top box technologies, describes the operating systems and middleware products available, and looks at the servers and technologies that are needed to support broadband Internet, intranet and TV-centric applications.