Online Media Ltd and Macromedia Inc have signed a joint development and marketing agreement which gives Online the right to become a full implementation partner in Macromedia’s Portable Player programme. Online Media, the Cambridge, UK-based supplier of television set-top boxes will initially develop a Player for the Online range of Advanced RISC Machines Ltd RISC-based set-top boxes. The Portable Player programme is both a strategy and a technology and means that an application written using the Macromedia Director and Authorware authoring tools will not have to be re-written separately for the variety of proprietary set-top boxes on the market. Macromedia, the San Francisco, California-based developer of multimedia software tools, believes there does not need to be a standard for set-top devices or games systems. Instead a Portable Player can be written for each new set-top box design and any application written using the Director and Authorware tools can be run on the set-top box. It said t hat developing the initial technology to make an application compatible with a particular games or set-top box system is not in itself a simple process, but once the technology has been developed, it cuts the application conversion process down from months to days. This also gives Online the scope to change the design of its set-top boxes if it wishes without facing a lack of applications that can run on them and means Macromedia can boost sales of the Director authoring tool. It’s a win-win situation for both of us, said Norm Pensky, senior director of strategic sales at Macromedia. The Portable Player technology works by taking the data from the application and rendering it onto the particular capabilities of the hardware it is to be run on. Macromedia signed an agreement with Microware Systems Corp, the supplier of OS/9 real-time operating system software products for interactive television, last August to bring existing CD-ROM titles to interactive television networks, although the Player being developed is not yet shipping.
