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What is a Set Top Box?

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Unlike my difficulties over defining the Kiosk device category, defining the Set Top Box is more cut and dry. The information below was collected by browsing dozens of product brochures from 8 different manufacturers, browsing many STB OEM/ISV web sites, docs and international convention reports. And yes, this also includes playing with STB devices in the Embedded QA lab. <grin>

Today, the STB is more like a "Home Multimedia Platform" or an "IP STB". The “IP” is for Internet Protocol, signifying that STBs are becoming dependent on broadband connectivity and your home’s wired or wireless LAN. As this whitepaper (Word Doc format) hosted by WindowsForDevices points out:

 “IP STBs present new opportunities for network service providers to deliver revenue-generating home entertainment services”.

The STB is no longer *just* a basic cable or satellite receiver. For instance, today some users want to wirelessly share multimedia throughout the household; or at least users want to do this once they see it’s possible, kind of a “tail wagging the dog” scenario<grin>. Also, I believe that in the next few years, this device category will see itself morphing into more of a “HomeGateway/Multimedia Server” device where TV/Movies is just one form of content decoded - think XM Radio or personal FTP/Web Server sharing your content on the net, etc… 

What are these devices running today? For the most part the STBs with rich features are running CE, Linux and XPe. While CE is fairly popular in this area due to the very tight BOM costs, the value of XPe in these devices is its reduced time to market through leveraging Windows Drivers/Features and off the shelf applications (think Java Games, DVR Apps). So XPE is able to provide the OS functionality and the media infrastructure allowing the developer to simply add the middleware or applications to access Content and Services.

Microsoft is not the only company that realizes the value of this market and the need for a targeted platform of scalable HW and OS features to act as the foundation for the STB industry. Intel’s reliable i815 & i830M chipsets are the HW platforms they’re pushing for consumer electronics, these STB boards have a Celeron (low voltage or Ultra low voltage flavors), on board NIC, video, audio, support for Flash/DOM and much more. From that site, Intel’s goal for the i830M is not just for STBs, they’re targeting “Media Centric Applications”.

As if all that wasn’t enough, let’s add a new wrinkle to the software solutions arena. There’s now Microsoft TV Foundation that provides a SW platform targeting Interactive Programming. A few months ago I upgraded my cable box to a new Motorola version with DVR capability; that was my first experience with MS TV Foundation, there’s no going back now <grin>

Now to the good stuff, this is my perception of the high level list of features provided by STBs today (this includes XPe, CE, Linux STBs):

  • PVR
  • Large HD for PVR storage
  • Digital Rights Management
  • Media Player
  • Custom Shell
  • Digital TV, Satellite TV, Analog TV
  • Ability to share personal media with PCs and networked devices
  • Internet Access, Browsing the Web
  • DVD R/W
  • Pay Per View
  • Video Telephony (VOIP)
  • Tele-learning (remote training device)
  • Wireless

This list is the most commonly shipped hardware:

  • Cheap Procs, Celerons/Geodes, 266Mhz-1GHz
  • TV Tuner (Dig. / Ana.)
  • HW Decoding
  • USB Ports
  • Infrared
  • Serial port
  • 64-256MB RAM
  • Compact Flash 32MB<
  • 802.11 (internal or external via usb)
  • 10/100 NIC
  • Internal 56k modem
  • 2 PCI slots
  • Hard Drives (for PVR)
  • DVD R/W

This is the most commonly shipped software:

  • Internet Explorer
  • Windows Media Player
  • SW Flash
  • DRM (very common)
  • Bluetooth
  • MPEG video codecs
  • Java
  • Middleware from ConnectTV or ORCA
  • Custom Shell
  • TV Application, Guide browser
  • SSL 2/3
  • ActiveX
  • DirectX

Additional references :

- Andy Allred

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