A Convergence Proposal Between the Brazilian Middleware for iDTV and Home Network Platforms Nairon S. Viana, Orlewilson B. Maia, Vicente F. de Lucena J´ unior, Luciano C. Pinto Federal University of Amazonas CETELI - Electronics and Information Technology R&D Center Av. Gen. Rodrigo Oct´ avio, 3000 Manaus - AM - Brazil 69065-190 {nairon viana, orlewilson maia, vicente, lucianopinto}@ufam.edu.br Abstract—Digital TV Systems open a new world of possibilities. Since December 2007 the Brazilian people has been experiencing this new technology. Among the most promising applications are the ones that enable TV-Sets to work as the central processing unit of a house. This paper presents the most recent strategies to implement convergence models between Digital TV Systems and Residential Gateway Platforms. The first goal of this pa- per is showing how the already proposed models implement convergent scenarios between the two involved worlds: at one side the function-oriented MHP (Multimedia Home Platform) middleware, a set of standardized Java APIs for Digital TV and, at the Home Networks side, the services-oriented OSGi (Open Services Gateway Initiative) framework. Our final goal is to identify the most relevant features for our country in order to propose a new collaboration model supported by OSGi and the Brazilian declarative reference middleware (Ginga-NCL). This model is validated on a convergent scenario Ginga-NCL–OSGi. Index Terms—Ginga, OSGi, Home Networking, Digital Con- vergence. I. I NTRODUCTION The characteristics of new interactive Digital TV (iDTV) systems are assuming a very important role in modern life. In fact, these features are being increasingly expanded, from simple signal decoders to sophisticated devices that allow the execution of interactive applications related to the content displayed, providing services of all kinds like internet access, TV-Banking, TV-Mail, TV-Commerce, Games and so on [1], [2]. This new world is about to be established in the Brazilian market. Nowadays the common way of expanding the functiona- lities of a Set-Top Box (STB) is to connect it with other devices equipped with some computational power such as the electronic equipments of a Home Network system. This is possible by the use of the STB as the central processing unit of the networked devices architecture, as a Residential Gateway (RG) [3]. The exploration of iDTV interactivity to access devices leads to many usage scenarios providing a networked entertainment environment to the consumer. The iDTV use as an RG can be made by constructing collaboration models through the analysis of software frameworks representing two distinct technological worlds: the iDTVs themselves and the networked Home Appliances. From the iDTV perspective arise software architectures like Multimedia Home Platform (MHP), one of the most important specification for middleware; DTV Application Software Environment (DASE), US model middleware; and more recently, GINGA, middleware for the Brazilian Digital TV standard. From the home devices perspective arises Open Services Gateway initiative (OSGi), a framework that sets standards for connecting devices and sharing services in home environments. For the Brazilian iDTV System, a model that explores the specific features of the declarative and procedural environ- ments (GINGA-NCL and GINGA-J) brings to the market new applications, allowing the consumer to imerge himself into an interconnected home, using the interactivity of GINGA to manage devices and sharing information among them. The proposal of this paper is analyzing the main existing collaboration environments described in [4]–[7] that use the iDTV middleware and OSGi specifications, taking into ac- count the most important and appropriated characteristics for the creation of a collaboration model between Ginga and OSGi. Especially, two proposals, in [6], [7], are chosen for this new model: Ginga-OSGi at software level. Based on these proposals a strategy is implemented to enable the interaction between the declarative Brazilian middleware Ginga-NCL and devices in an IPTV-based (Internet Protocol Television) net- work, exploring mainly the Java Virtual Machine capabilities and the XML technology. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. A review of some relevant related works is shown in Section II. The two methods chosen for analysis of the collaboration model MHP-OSGi are presented in Section III. In Section IV are presented, in a general way, the Brazilian reference middle- ware, some of the characteristics about the new collaboration model Ginga-OSGi and a study case of implementation in a real monitoring system scenario, using a model compatible with MHP and Ginga-NCL. Finally, some conclusions are presented in Section V. II. RELATED WORKS There are some proposals presented in the literature integra- ting STBs and Residential Gateways. Most of them take advan- tage of the potentials offered by iDTV middlewares (MHP or DASE) and send commands to the home network framework 978-1-4244-2309-5/09/$25.00 ©2009 IEEE