Sony

Download
(PDF, 173K)

Digital TV delivery

The challenge

A major European broadcaster wished to launch a digital television service and approached Sony Manufacturing with the aim of procuring Integrated Receiver Decoders (IRDs) based on the MediaHighway and MediaGuard suite of specifications.

The production volumes required were in the millions and the broadcaster demanded fault-free operation and therefore highly reliable hardware and software.

The short time scales meant that Sony required substantial support from IPL who had already worked for them on a number of broadcast-related projects.

Sony turned to IPL again because of our ability to quickly deploy a large team of high quality staff and because of our track record of flexibility, value for money, reliability and quality of software development services.

The solution

IPL's principal broadcast activities have been in the design and development of the software devices that reside between the service provider's applications and the IRD hardware-specific embedded device drivers.

This includes:

• Conditional access management
• MPEG data management
• Service management
• Peripheral management including smart card and user interfaces and external interfaces
• Software downloads.

The project required a large team to be built up quickly and be managed effectively both in terms of time and cost. To compound the challenge further, the broadcaster constantly changed and refined the requirements.

IPL responded by leading the on-going high level technical and commercial discussions with the broadcaster to ensure that the software being produced would satisfy not just the short term, but the long term needs as well.

The highlights

The IRD was successfully launched on schedule. Its performance and reliability proved itself to be superior to that of other manufacturers and helped Sony win a number of ‘follow-on’ projects from the same broadcaster, with the assistance of the same core team from IPL.

Subsequent projects completed by IPL involved porting software for ongoing hardware cost reduction.

IPL continues to offer enhancements to current ‘in-production’ IRDs that are now in use in many countries across Europe as well as the development of next generation IRD software for new applications and platforms such as Personal Data Recorders.

IPL is a European leader in the development of IRD software.