The Essential Guide to Digital Set-Top Boxes and Interactive TV (Essential Guide Series) - Softcover

O'Driscoll, Gerard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0130173606 ISBN 13: 9780130173607

Publisher: Prentice Hall, 1999

Synopsis

There's a revolution coming to your TV: a digital, interactive, Internet-enabled revolution that will make possible services you've never imagined! The next TV revolution comes with new technologies, new standards, new architectures, and new business paradigms. Finally, there's a single source for up-to-the-minute insight into every aspect of next-generation digital TV: The Essential Guide to Digital Set-Top Boxes and Interactive TV. From MPEG-4 to middleware, webcasting to Java OS, Gerard O'Driscoll covers the state-of-the-art, comparing the strategies and technologies -- and cutting through the hype. Start by reviewing the building blocks of digital TV, including compression, encoding, modulation, conditional access, transmission, and network management. Preview next-generation digital set-tops, understanding their key features and components. Compare the leading set-top operating systems, including JavaOS, Windows CE, David OS-9, PowerTV, VxWorks, pSOS+, and other key entries. Understand the technologies and opportunities associated with Internet-based TV, including set-top Web browsing, webcasting, email, online chat, broadband applications, video on demand, parental controls, and more. Compare today's hottest electronic program guides (EPGs), and discover how they promise to serve as 21st century portals to the TV experience. If it's part of the digital interactive TV revolution, you'll learn about it in The Essential Guide to Digital Set-Top Boxes and Interactive TV! For everyone who needs to know where TV is headed, including investors, managers, marketing or PR professionals, software developers, public policy professionals, and consumers.

About this title

About the Author

Gerard O'Driscoll is Director of New Interactive Services for a major Ireland-based software company.

From the Back Cover

1736K-5

Everything you need to know about the coming digital interactive TV revolution!

There's a revolution coming to your TV: a digital, interactive, Internet-enabled revolution that will make possible services you've never imagined! The next TV revolution comes with new technologies, new standards, new architectures, and new business paradigms. Finally, there's a single source for up-to-the-minute insight into every aspect of next-generation digital TV: The Essential Guide to Digital Set-Top Boxes and Interactive TV!

From MPEG-4 to middleware, webcasting to Java OS, Gerard O'Driscoll covers the state-of-the-art, comparing the strategies and technologies-and cutting through the hype. Coverage includes all this, and more:

• Digital TV building blocks: compression, encoding, modulation, conditional access, transmission, and management
• Advanced digital set-tops: features, components, installation, and troubleshooting
• Set-top operating systems: JavaOS, Windows CE, David OS-9, PowerTV, VxWorks, pSOS+, Linux, and more
• Internet-based TV: set-top Web browsing, webcasting, email, online chat, broadband applications, video on demand, parental controls, and more
• Electronic program guides (EPGs): 21st century TV portals
• Development, server architecture, middleware, network management, smartcards, MPEG-4, and much more

Whether you're an investor, manager, marketing or PR professional, software developer, or consumer, you need to know where TV is headed, and only one book can show you: The Essential Guide to Digital Set-Top Boxes and Interactive TV!

Edition details

• Publisher: Prentice Hall
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0130173606
• ISBN 13: 9780130173607
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320