TV Connect 2017: iWedia extends Android TV platform availability

TV software provider iWedia has extended the availability of its Android TV platform to two widely used set-top box chipsets.

iWedia has extended the coverage of its Teatro-3.5 Android TV product to the Amlogic S905D STB system-on-a-chip and to the HiSilicon Hi3798MV200 chipset.

The Amlogic S905D SoC is deployed by pay TV operators worldwide and and is capable of decoding 4Kp60 10-bit HEVC and VP9 formats with HDR. The SoC has a quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A53 CPU and a penta-core ARM Mali-450 MP3 GPU to handle UI and premium content. It also supports operator-level security technologies like Trusted Video Path (TVP) and video watermarking.

“Our S905D SoC is ideally suited for Android TV STB and has passed CTS, GTS, and other Google certifications for a better Time-To-Market. Integrating Teatro-3.5 enables us to accelerate the Time-To-Market further and to leverage iWedia’s software integration services,” said James Xie, vice-president, corporate business strategy at Amlogic.

The HiSilicon Hi3798MV200 chipset provides a solution for HEVC boxes running Android or giving support to HTML5 under Linux. Hi3798MV200 is a full-4K SoC that supports H.265 video decoding up to 4Kx2K at 60fps. It integrates the quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A53 processor and a multi-core 2D/3D acceleration engine. It supports H.265 HD video encoding, HDR video decoding and display, HDR-to-SDR conversion, and Dolby and DTS audio processing. It also features a security engine integrating a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), a Secure Video-Path (SVP), and forensic watermarking technologies.

“HiSilicon has been concentrating on Android-based solutions for several years. In working closely with a middleware company like iWedia we can jointly support the wishes of TV operators to grow their business in using Android TV to provide more value-added services,” said John Liu, General Manager of STB Product Line at HiSilicon.

Teatro-3.5 is based on iWedia’s Android4TV framework which extends Android TV with broadcast and multicast pay TV functionalities implemented as input modules of the Android TV Input Framework (TIF), according to the company.

The product is available for Android TV 7.0 Nougat, integrated with various conditional access systems, and connected to various service delivery platforms and content delivery networks.

Part of Teatro-3.5, C-More Live is a custom launcher and TV app meant to be tailored for the operator. The app is compliant with both Android TV Operator Tier program requirements and Google design principles, according to iWedia. It allows navigating and accessing the whole features provided by the operator such as live TV, VoD, catchup TV, DVR, and time-shift.

iWedia is exhibiting at TV Connect on stand B54.