A Convergence Proposal between the Brazilian Middleware for iDTV and Home Network Platforms

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 paper 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.