NEWS RELEASE
February 2005
Ocean Blue Software, the specialist digital TV software developer, has announced support for Freesat, the BBC's planned free satellite service, and the recently-announced DVB-H standard for digital TV on mobile handsets.
Ocean Blue is developing the software for a new generation of Freesat TVs and set-top boxes, including dual- and quad-tuner DVRs (Digital Video Recorders). The BBC announced last month that it will launch a free satellite service later this year, provisionally named Freesat.
Freesat will broadcast the same television channels as Freeview via satellite. The service will appeal to the 20-25% of the UK population living in poor reception areas for digital terrestrial (Freeview) signals.
Ocean Blue’s products for Freesat include Sunrise, a foundation suite of software products for digital TV receiver products, and Voyager the middleware system to provide interactivity based on MHEG-5 and DSM-CC. Ocean Blue is already working with a number of leading consumer electronics manufacturers, who will be bring Freesat devices to the market..
Ocean Blue will also be supporting the new DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcast - Handheld) digital TV standards for the transmission of Digital TV content to mobile phones. Devices equipped with DVB-H software will be able to view TV content on demand
The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) confirmed in November that DVB-H is to be adopted as the standard in Europe for mobile TV services
DVB-H enables the simultaneous transmission of multiple television, radio and video channels to mobile handheld devices. It combines traditional broadcasting standards with specific features for handheld devices. Commercial mobile TV handsets with integrated DVB-H are expected in 2006.
"The market for digital television continues to evolve," commented Ken Helps, Managing Director of Ocean Blue. "With Freesat and DVB-H the consumer electronics companies have two entirely new services to develop devices for. Ocean Blue aims to be involved with a number of significant players to help them deliver innovative products, quickly and easily."
Technical Information.
Ocean Blue’s: Voyager software system MHEG-5 &
DSM-CC is 10 man-year + development project, hence a considerable piece of
software development. The MHEG-5 & DSM-CC software was developed in the
industry standard C programming language. C software code is portable to many
different operating systems and hardware computing platforms.
Ocean Blue’s Sunrise: Is a suite of integrated software products, which provides all
the functionality for receiving Digital pictures & audio on Digital set top
boxes and televisions.
Ocean Blue’s: Surfsoft system software is compact
& robust and is used to manage and control TV content saved to a hard disk
based Digital TV device. Many features and functions are standard with Surfsoft
including Time shift, search, retrieve, save, record, timed recording and pause.
For
further information or pictures please contact:
Ken
Helps
Ken.Helps@oceanbluesoftware.co.uk
0870
24 25 546
Peter
Linton
0118
984 3386