We've seen talk on blogs about IPTV features -- for example, a user comparing DirecTV to AT&T's U-verse stated that while his DirecTV can search for actors, movies and show schedules, U-verse's ubar function provides similar capabilities without requiring you to navigate away from your show. He also likes the fact that he doesn't have to wait for the ubar to load.
We’ve long believed that IPTV through services like AT&T’s U-verse will become even more popular when innovative middleware solutions transform the television into a more Internet-like surfing experience. All indications seem to point toward a browser-like application coming to a set-top box in your living room.
Dreampark , who claim to provide the most widely deployed middleware in Europe, have based their client software on open Web standards executing the code in a browser application on the STB. The Dreampark vision is to provide TV operators with the flexibility they need in a rapidly changing market place. Unlike dedicated client software, Dreampark works with Mozilla, Ant and Opera browsers through their application programming interfaces (APIs) and claims that their approach provides the features and performance of dedicated client software while being easier to maintain and adapt to different set-top boxes.
Longer term we expect products like Dreampark to help realize the vision of the IPTV experience that we’ve long projected. Users will be able to sit in their living room and transform their television into a dynamic entertainment system that leverages triple-play IP based services (voice, video and data). Users will be able to search for entertainment titles much like they can through common search engines, watch, stop, pause and add picture-in-picture capabilities where they can watch the bonus-features side by side with the feature attraction. These kind of browser-like capabilities will likely further fuel the adoption of IPTV, which is a good thing for the entire home networking industry.
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