Cabot to Offer MHEG Middleware Solution Enabling HD Interactive TV Services on Freesat

UK-based DVB middleware specialist, UK-based DVB middleware specialist, Cabot Communications, announced last week that it is extending its middleware suite to support Freesat, the UK's free-to-air digital satellite service, which currently offers around 200 TV and radio channels, including HD broadcasts. According to the company, its Freesat MHEG solution will be available in mid-2009 and will support advanced interactive television services with full HD graphics. Features claimed by Cabot for the solution include: an extended color palette with 32-bit color; photo-quality images, including True Color JPEG support; high-resolution font rendering at up to 1080 lines, including support for downloadable fonts, enabling manufacturers to utilize corporate fonts and styles; improved screen usage, enabling more text to appear on screen; and an interaction channel facility, enabling the retrieval of data such as images, text, audio and video clips, and the submission of data such as viewer votes, competition entries and product-purchasing details. In addition, Cabot says, "the application lifestyle has also been enhanced to provide non-destructive tuning, therefore providing a much improved and more engaging viewer experience."

According to Cabot, the new Freesat solution--which it says will be available as a plug-in or pre-integrated with Aurora, the company's complete DVB middleware solution--will also provide manufacturers with such features as the regionalization of service lists according to postcode; automatic dynamic updates to the service list; the ability to genre-sort the EPG; audio description and guidance descriptor support; HD content digital rights management; and increased energy efficiency. The company also says that a full middleware solution for set-top boxes, DVR's and integrated digital TV's, which will support video streaming via the return channel, will be available in the third quarter. It promises that the DVR solution will use push-VOD technology to control recordings and playback via the MHEG application.

In other Cabot news: The company announced Wednesday that it has successfully completed interoperability testing between its Common Interface Plus (CI+) software solution and the SmarDTV CI+ reference module (Note: the CI+ standard, which was developed by the CI+ Forum, whose participants include such CE giants as Panasonic, Philips, Samsung and Sony, is billed as enabling the secure delivery of pay-TV services to digital TV receivers; according to the Forum, the enhanced security within the new CI+ specification allows smartcards and CAM's to be used with any set-top or IDTV that supports the standard, thus giving consumers a choice of receiver equipment). It claims to have been the first middleware vendor to have done so.

According to Cabot, its CI+ solution, branded as Keystone, provides an enhanced security system that uses key exchange technology to secure an unhackable data link. The data itself is also encrypted with triple-DES or AES technology, the company says, thus protecting broadcasters' content by ensuring that unencrypted video is accessible at no stage in the stream (from transmission to display). Cabot says it selected the SmarDTV test suite and tools to thoroughly test its CI+ solution, which passed a full range of tests, including secure channel negotiation, key exchange, certificate handling and successful video decryption. The company also says it wrote several CI+ test applications in MHEG, in order to further test its solution's functionality beyond the SmarDTV scope. "Though the original CI specification was adequate for the market when it was first introduced, CI no longer provides the protection required by today's content providers," Cabot's managing director, Bob Lamb, said in a prepared statement. "As technology has developed over time, it has become possible for someone with the correct tools to hack the data decrypted by the CAM. Cabot created Keystone to provide the ultimate in security for our customers, while still being compatible with legacy CI systems. Cabot is delighted to have successfully completed SmarDTV CI+ interoperability testing and is now engaging with several manufacturers regarding deploying our CI+ stack to their hardware."

According to Cabot, its Keystone CI+ solution also offers a rich application environment, using MHEG-5, which it says allows CAM manufacturers to present a more professional, high-end application to the user than was possible with CI MMI messages alone. In addition, the company says, the CI+ Profile in MHEG provides restrictions on what MHEG application authors can do, in line with the CI+ specification, and implements downloadable fonts that enable better broadcaster branding. Cabot claims that its CI+ solution development was especially fast, due to an emulated CI+ CAM--written in the Python programming language--that the company developed in-house. It says that the emulated CI+ CAM accelerated CI+ development, even when there was no hardware available, and enabled it to test and verify areas of the CI+ specification not usually tested by CI+ test suites.

, announced last week that it is extending its middleware suite to support Freesat, the UK's free-to-air digital satellite service, which currently offers around 200 TV and radio channels, including HD broadcasts. According to the company, its Freesat MHEG solution will be available in mid-2009 and will support advanced interactive television services with full HD graphics. Features claimed by Cabot for the solution include: an extended color palette with 32-bit color; photo-quality images, including True Color JPEG support; high-resolution font rendering at up to 1080 lines, including support for downloadable fonts, enabling manufacturers to utilize corporate fonts and styles; improved screen usage, enabling more text to appear on screen; and an interaction channel facility, enabling the retrieval of data such as images, text, audio and video clips, and the submission of data such as viewer votes, competition entries and product-purchasing details. In addition, Cabot says, "the application lifestyle has also been enhanced to provide non-destructive tuning, therefore providing a much improved and more engaging viewer experience."

According to Cabot, the new Freesat solution--which it says will be available as a plug-in or pre-integrated with Aurora, the company's complete DVB middleware solution--will also provide manufacturers with such features as the regionalization of service lists according to postcode; automatic dynamic updates to the service list; the ability to genre-sort the EPG; audio description and guidance descriptor support; HD content digital rights management; and increased energy efficiency. The company also says that a full middleware solution for set-top boxes, DVR's and integrated digital TV's, which will support video streaming via the return channel, will be available in the third quarter. It promises that the DVR solution will use push-VOD technology to control recordings and playback via the MHEG application.

In other Cabot news: The company announced Wednesday that it has successfully completed interoperability testing between its Common Interface Plus (CI+) software solution and the SmarDTV CI+ reference module (Note: the CI+ standard, which was developed by the CI+ Forum, whose participants include such CE giants as Panasonic, Philips, Samsung and Sony, is billed as enabling the secure delivery of pay-TV services to digital TV receivers; according to the Forum, the enhanced security within the new CI+ specification allows smartcards and CAM's to be used with any set-top or IDTV that supports the standard, thus giving consumers a choice of receiver equipment). It claims to have been the first middleware vendor to have done so.

According to Cabot, its CI+ solution, branded as Keystone, provides an enhanced security system that uses key exchange technology to secure an unhackable data link. The data itself is also encrypted with triple-DES or AES technology, the company says, thus protecting broadcasters' content by ensuring that unencrypted video is accessible at no stage in the stream (from transmission to display). Cabot says it selected the SmarDTV test suite and tools to thoroughly test its CI+ solution, which passed a full range of tests, including secure channel negotiation, key exchange, certificate handling and successful video decryption. The company also says it wrote several CI+ test applications in MHEG, in order to further test its solution's functionality beyond the SmarDTV scope. "Though the original CI specification was adequate for the market when it was first introduced, CI no longer provides the protection required by today's content providers," Cabot's managing director, Bob Lamb, said in a prepared statement. "As technology has developed over time, it has become possible for someone with the correct tools to hack the data decrypted by the CAM. Cabot created Keystone to provide the ultimate in security for our customers, while still being compatible with legacy CI systems. Cabot is delighted to have successfully completed SmarDTV CI+ interoperability testing and is now engaging with several manufacturers regarding deploying our CI+ stack to their hardware."

According to Cabot, its Keystone CI+ solution also offers a rich application environment, using MHEG-5, which it says allows CAM manufacturers to present a more professional, high-end application to the user than was possible with CI MMI messages alone. In addition, the company says, the CI+ Profile in MHEG provides restrictions on what MHEG application authors can do, in line with the CI+ specification, and implements downloadable fonts that enable better broadcaster branding. Cabot claims that its CI+ solution development was especially fast, due to an emulated CI+ CAM--written in the Python programming language--that the company developed in-house. It says that the emulated CI+ CAM accelerated CI+ development, even when there was no hardware available, and enabled it to test and verify areas of the CI+ specification not usually tested by CI+ test suites.