OpenTV’s browser has been used by Matsushita (MEI) and JVC’s digital TVs, and has been established as the de facto standard for MEI’s Tnavi browser. TVPS launched the acTVila portal in February 2007 as a common TV portal.
OpenTV Integrated Browser, designed for the Japanese interactive television market in conjunction with MEI, has now been enhanced to support this new industry portal. Because it meets the browser specifications set by Networked Digital Television, which is referenced by TVPS, OpenTV is able to give content providers a standard browser development platform that can be used to create and validate their own content.
OpenTV Integrated Browser validation platform is developed for Windows for accessibility and ease of use on the PC. This is provided free of charge by OpenTV on request and will be available on June 21, 2007.
Successful commercial deployment of TVPS’s acTVila portal is dependent on how its content can be viewed correctly across different sets of TVs. This new tool now allows content providers to do that validation using the familiar Windows XP system, said Arata Hirao, general manager of OpenTV Japan.
The acTVila portal is already available on brands of digital TVs such as MEI, Sony, Sharp, JVC, Eizo, and Funai, and it is expected that other home appliance manufacturers will release their own acTVila-compliant TVs in 2007 to 2008.
