Design and Implementation of a RIA Framework for IPTV Set-Top Boxes

As increasing emphasis is being placed on user experience design, the RIA (rich Internet application) technology is now widely deployed for user interface and software execution on embedded devices including cell phones, PMPs and TVs. In particular, RIA-based IPTVs are recently gaining attraction in that they enable creation of various sophisticated contents via animation and interactivity. This paper proposes a RIA framework for IPTV set-top boxes. We design and implement a programming interface for media playback in IPTV environments. Based on the interface, we develop a prototype of Adobe Flash-compatible RIA run-time with the support of IPTV media. The runtime was carefully designed to fully utilize the builtin graphic acceleration hardware in media processors. It is therefore able to render sophisticated vector graphics in the resource-constrained IPTV systems. Demonstration and extensive experiments validate the proposed framework.