Hitachi Ltd’s SpaceSystems division plans to roll out up to 200,000 set top boxes for digital satellite broadcasters in Japan between now and the end of the century, and on Tuesday announced it was ready to ship the first 30,000 Hitachi Multi-RDR boxes over the next three months. The news, revealed at Sun Microsystems Inc’s Software Day on Tuesday (CI No 3,428) involves set top boxes that use Sun’s JavaOS running on the Hitachi SH-3 RISC chip, and are the first Java-powered set top boxes to reach the market, according to Hitachi. They will be used for subscribers of Japan’s HK Channel, to deliver secure network- based information services which can be dynamically downloaded through digital satellite channels in Japan. The services include interactive distance learning, news broadcasts, medical information and welfare support. Contracts with other digital satellite broadcasters are expected to follow. Cable is not currently supported. Hitachi says it has set up a services delivery network that supports both digital broadcast and multimedia data, such as text, audio and graphics, and says the Multi-RDR multi receiver-decoder-recorder box enables interactive access to TV via satellite and web access. A further product, using similar technology but aimed more at the computer market, is expected to follow. Earlier this year, Hitachi licensed its All Format Decoder technology to Intel Corp so that PCs could decode digital television signals (CI No 3,384). Tele- Communications Inc (TCI) also plans to use Java to power its set top boxes in the US (CI No 3,405).
