Product Description

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. Start by reviewing the building blocks of digital TV, including compression, encoding, modulation, conditional access, transmission, and network management. Preview next-generation digital set-tops, understanding their key features and components. Compare the leading set-top operating systems, including JavaOS, Windows CE, David OS-9, PowerTV, VxWorks, pSOS+, and other key entries. Understand the technologies and opportunities associated with Internet-based TV, including set-top Web browsing, webcasting, email, online chat, broadband applications, video on demand, parental controls, and more. Compare today's hottest electronic program guides (EPGs), and discover how they promise to serve as 21st century portals to the TV experience. If it's part of the digital interactive TV revolution, you'll learn about it in The Essential Guide to Digital Set-Top Boxes and Interactive TV! For everyone who needs to know where TV is headed, including investors, managers, marketing or PR professionals, software developers, public policy professionals, and consumers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #697831 in Books
• Published on: 1999-12-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Don't let the title mislead you: The Essential Guide to Digital Set-top Boxes and Interactive TV isn't a primer for using WebTV's enhanced services. This book is for software, programming and TV professionals looking to capitalise on this paradigm shift in the delivery of information and entertainment. With that in mind, Gerard O'Driscoll has done a masterly job of condensing a complex subject.

O'Driscoll starts off by briefly explaining the roles of the various international standards groups and taking you through the building blocks of digital TV. He is clearly familiar with digital TV's underlying technology, offering detailed information about competing operating systems, development platforms and broadband networks.

Less clear are the benefits and drawbacks to all of the factors involved. O'Driscoll occasionally touches upon these--such as when he notes Microsoft's difficulties in cracking the digital set-top business--but too often he fails to provide analysis of why a certain method works better than another, or why one technology has been more successful in gathering momentum. For example, O'Driscoll notes that electronic cash as a potential digital TV application must be safe from counterfeiting and other forms of fraud, but he doesn't mention what initiatives are underway to achieve this. It would also be helpful to have an idea of how viable such applications are in the near future.

Nonetheless, O'Driscoll has provided useful, if seriously technical, guide to what the future of TV may hold. For software developers and television executives alike, The Essential Guide to Digital Set-top Boxes and Interactive TV is just that--essential. --John Frederick Moore, Amazon.com

Topics covered: Building blocks of a digital TV system, architecture of a set-top OS, middleware standards, set-top application development, choice of broadband intranet applications, and general principles of designing for a TV environment.

From the Back Cover

1736K-5

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!

About the Author

Gerard O'Driscoll is Director of New Interactive Services for a major Ireland-based software company.

Customer Reviews

Reasonable intro, but inconsistent and incorrect in places.
I read this because I needed a jumpstart into interactive TV technologies. On the first read, I found it to be quite out of date in the "home networking" section - even in 1999 it was quite affordable to link a couple of PCs at home by using network cards and some co-ax or CAT 5. Also, the HTML briefing was scrappily inaccurate and overly simplified.
On a second read, it was obvious that from one page to the next, there could be inconsistency within even such basics as acronym expansions. Overall, I'm sure it will be a good start to learn about interactive TV and set-top boxes, however, I get the feeling that I need to check all of the facts presented, just to be certain of their accuracy.

Easy2Read & well written high-level view of the STB world
Although not heavily detailed, the information here is essential reading for anyone who needs a primer for this emerging industry, giving a well-rounded snapshot of the DigiSTB universe, with a background on the big players in the field. The high-level and conscientiously untechie (but not patronising) content makes the material easy to absorb. Highly recommended.

Good to get to know the basics
Not a bad start if you want to understand the fundamentals of Digital TV.

This book will also be useful for those who work for digital TV providers who are on the front line of any faults department.