Linux moves into thick-client digital set-tops

CHICAGO—Nobody really even wants them yet, but, if an alliance of cable, satellite and telecommunications equipment suppliers have their way, next-generation digital set-top boxes will be built with a Linux platform at their base.

Twenty-four vendors have formed the Linux Alliance, announced at this week’s National Cable & Telecommunications Association Cable 2001, with the goal of defining a standard application programming interface (API) to simplify the implementation of TV middleware and device drivers for the Linux operating environment. This, they hope, will allow network operators to choose vendors with interoperable offerings based on the common API.

“It’s about standards. There’s significant value in standards,” said Mitchell Kertzman, CEO of Liberate Technologies, a middleware vendor.

Those standards, it was emphasized, will apply mainly to next-generation “thicker client set-tops, or more robust-client set-tops” such as the Motorola DCT-5000, said Carl McGrath, vice president and general manager of DigiCable for Motorola. “The emphasis here is on networking.”

In all cases, the emphasis of the alliance is to get the more free-spirited, engineer-supported Linux operating software integrated into future generations of set-top boxes where it will join such incumbents as Windows CE and Vertex, both of which are in high-end Motorola boxes.

“I think the focus is speed to market and robustness in a highly networked world,” McGrath continued.

The Linux Alliance will in no way interfere with CableLabs’ ongoing OpenCable standardizations efforts, the group’s founders insisted.

“These specifications are at a lower level than OpenCable,” said Kertzman. “This is the challenge we all have at the layer below OpenCable.”

Although the list of 24 original members is replete with interactive TV and software names, it is conspicuously missing two industry leaders: Scientific-Atlanta and Microsoft.

“They were approached,” Kertzman said. “We had discussions with all of them. There’s probably less there than meets the eye.”

The Linux Alliance is on a relatively fast track, considering there is no real operator or consumer demand for the heavy duty set-tops with which it will be working. The first release specification is expected to be delivered late this year or early next year and reference solutions will be available by next year.

“We see this as driving the next generation of set-tops,” McGrath concluded.