Canal+ U.S. Technologies Enables VisualCafe Java Development Tools to Target Interactive Television.Business Editors The Western Show 2000 CUPERTINO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 29, 2000 MediaHighway(TM) Plug-in for WebGain's Popular VisualCafe(TM) Java Development Environment Opens iTV Development to Thousands of Java Developers Worldwide Canal+ U.S. Technologies, an international provider of interactive middleware for television, today announced a strategic agreement with Cascade Technology Group, a Silicon Valley-based software developer, to enable WebGain's VisualCafe Java application A Java program that is run stand alone. The Java Virtual Machine in the client or server is interpreting the instructions. Contrast with Java applet. See servlet. development environment to target Canal+ U.S. Technologies' MediaHighway middleware for interactive television. This agreement marks the first time the worldwide Java developers community has been tapped for interactive television development, and its objective is to accelerate the creation of both Open Cable and DVB-MHP (Digital Video Broadcast-Multimedia Home Platform) A Java-based platform for interactive TV over the Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) system. compliant Java-based applications for cable systems and other broadband network operators in the U.S. and Europe. According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. the agreement, Cascade Technology Group will work with Canal+ Technologies to develop a MediaHighway plug-in for WebGain's Visual Cafe A family of Java development products formerly from the WebGain division of Symantec and sold to TogetherSoft Corporation in 2002, which was acquired by Borland in 2003. Versions for Windows and the Macintosh were available that included a host of Java components and features for rapidly . The plug-in is designed to allow thousands of current Visual Cafe users worldwide to be able to immediately create interactive television applications in Java and play back the applications either on a MediaHighway simulator in their development PC, or on an actual MediaHighway set-top box The cable TV box that sits on "top" of the TV "set," although it is often located several feet away in an equipment rack. The set-top box descrambles the premium channels and provides a tuner for the higher cable numbers that very old TVs did not support. . Both Cable Labs in the U.S. and DVB-MHP in Europe have selected Java as the official execution environment for interactive television set-top boxes. MediaHighway powers the first, and currently only, cable set-top boxes commercially deployed in the U.S. that support applications written in Java. A demonstration of the MediaHighway plug-in for Visual Cafe will be shown at the Canal+ U.S. Technologies booth No. 3201 at The Western Cable Show, Nov. 29 to Dec. 1, at the Los Angeles Convention Center The Los Angeles Convention Center (abbreviated LACC) is a convention center in downtown Los Angeles. The LACC hosts annual events such as the Greater Los Angeles Auto Show, and was best known to video games fans as host to E3 until its cessation in 2006. . "This agreement is the best example of the power of open systems," said Jean-Marc Racine, CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. of Canal+ U.S. Technologies. "Through one single technology transfer, we hope to enable an existing development community to help us deliver interactive television to the masses. Other middleware providers are hemmed in and limited by their proprietary formats, requiring their own proprietary tools. "With Java, we can rapidly leverage well-known, well-supported and easily available tools like Visual Cafe. This is yet another example of our commitment to making interactive television available quickly, to as many network operators as possible, so they can deliver it to as many consumer homes as quickly as possible." "The extensive open API Open API (often referred to as OpenAPI) is a word used to describe sets of technologies that enable websites to interact with each other by using SOAP, Javascript any other web technology. of Visual Cafe, our leading Java technology development solution, allows companies to customize applications specifically for their industries," said Ted Farrell, WebGain's chief technology officer. "The integration with MediaHighway, allowing developers to create interactive television applications, is a powerful demonstration of how Visual Cafe can be used to provide a compelling solution for Java application development." The new IDE will be designed to provide for a complete development cycle, including source editing, visual form design, compilation, deployment, and debugging. A simple wizard will be designed to allow developers to immediately begin development of applications without complicated set up. Integrated project options will be designed to provide for seamless compilation, execution and debugging. A desktop simulator provides for a complete development runtime environment A configuration of hardware and software. It includes the CPU type, operating system and any runtime engines or system software required by a particular category of applications. See runtime engine. , and an integrated deployment mechanism allows developers to easily execute and debug To correct a problem in hardware or software. Debugging software means locating the errors in the source code (the program logic). Debugging hardware means finding errors in the circuit design (logical circuits) or in the physical interconnections of the circuits. applications running on MediaHighway set-top boxes. "Java developers will feel very comfortable using this integrated solution," said Will Iverson, CEO of Cascade Technology Group. "The combination of this popular Java development tool with MediaHighway is being developed to help enable rapid development of iTV applications." An evaluation version of the product is expected to be available in Q1 2001, and a full version in Q2 2001. About Canal+ U.S. Technologies Canal+ U.S. Technologies, a subsidiary of Paris-based Canal+ Technologies, SA, offers a wide range of field-proven and flexible digital and interactive TV systems currently deployed in more than 7 million set-top boxes from more than 20 major consumer electronics manufacturers. Its product line includes conditional access Conditional Access (acronymized CA) is the protection of content by requiring certain criteria to be met before granting access to this content. The term is commonly used in relation to digital television systems, most notably satellite television. software MediaGuard(TM), hardware-independent interactive system and middleware MediaHighway(TM), as well as over 30 different interactive and multimedia applications and several integrated development environments See IDE. integrated development environment - interactive development environment . A wholly-owned subsidiary of Canal+, one of Europe's largest pay-TV providers with 14 million subscriptions, Canal+ U.S. Technologies also designs and implements digital broadcasting Digital broadcasting is the practice of using digital data rather than analogue waveforms to carry broadcasts over television channels or assigned radio frequency bands. It is becoming increasingly popular for television usage (especially satellite television) but is having a infrastructures for its clients and is an integrator of digital cable, satellite, and terrestrial platforms such as AT&T (formerly MediaOne) in the U.S., ONdigital in the UK and CANALSATELLITE in France. |
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