RVU Alliance demos managed connected home technology

IBC2010, AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS: The RVU Alliance announced today that Alliance members Broadcom, DIRECTV, Entropic, JetHead Development, Marvell, Pace, Sigma Designs and STMicroelectronics will demonstrate their latest RVU based solutions at the IBC Show in Amsterdam from 10-14 September.

The demonstrations will showcase a wide variety of RVU technology implementations including RVU servers, set-top box and television client solutions, reference software stacks, test tools, and silicon platforms.

RVU servers provide an easily upgradable central point in the home and enable service providers to present their UI on user purchased CE devices with no additional hardware required. The RVU protocol is available to CE manufacturers via the publicly available RVU Protocol Specification.

“The RVU Alliance is proud to announce their members’ demonstrations at this key industry forum,” said Henry Derovanessian, president of the RVU Alliance Board of Directors and SVP of Engineering at DIRECTV.

“RVU is designed to address the needs of service providers for a consistent, pixel accurate user interface at all viewing points, and for consumers to enable the latest features on their CE devices. The wide variety of devices being shown demonstrates the expanding ecosystem being developed around this technology.”

RVU is a client/server-based technology that allows the television viewer to experience a consistent, pixel accurate server-generated user interface, on various consumer electronics devices.

The RVU specification uses widely implemented UPnP and DLNA technologies to enable a gateway device such as an advanced set-top box to work with non-proprietary client devices such as connected TVs, Blu-ray players, and set-top boxes.

Operators benefit from providing their viewing experience and features to connected CE devices in a consistent manner, while consumers benefit from a standard user experience throughout the home without the need for separate proprietary devices. A certification program will be in place in November this year, followed shortly afterwards by market introduction of RVU devices.