Salt Lake City, UT — (press release excerpt) — Century Embedded Technologies and National Semiconductor announced today that Century Embedded Technologies (a division of Century Software), will act as Technical Partner for open-source software (OSS) technologies for the National Geode SP1SC10 set-top box (STB)… reference platform.

Century Embedded Technologies, a developer of open-source software projects for the Linux operating system, will provide all technical support for National's set-top box original equipment manufacturers, distribution partners, development partners, and customers. This includes software ports to popular embedded Linux distributions, on-going driver and application development based on international video standards, and the design of tools and development environments used to create set-top box applications and customized user interfaces. Century will also maintain open-source projects based on National's set-top box hardware and software technologies.

Century has developed WebMedia, a plugin-based application framework that includes an integrated web browser, HTML-based menu system, application manager, and a variety of plugins used to control all facets of the set-top box. WebMedia, when combined with open-source drivers from National, form a complete top-to-bottom Linux software solution for next-generation set-top boxes.

“There has been a great deal of interest from the Linux developer community in National's set-top box solution,” said Dave Pedersen, set-top box business unit director at National Semiconductor. “Linux software is touted as an ideal solution for the next generation set-top box products.”

Next-generation set-top boxes will be the delivery point for new entertainment programs and services soon to be offered in the home. They will combine Internet access, browsing, streaming media playback, DVD, video-on-demand, email, shopping, DTV/HDTV, home networking, and a host of other features into a single, unified system.

According to Strategy Analytics, interactive digital television is expected to reach 625 million viewers by 2005. Forrester Research reports that 50% of European households will have access to interactive DTV by 2005, and that set-top boxes will be a gateway to more than $269 billion in online orders – and will influence another $378 billion in offline sales.

Century is well known for its sponsorship of open-source projects such as Microwindows and ViewML. According to Century Software founder and CEO Greg Haerr, “Century will play a key role in developing and coordinating dozens of new open-source set-top box projects based on National Semiconductor's Geode multimedia processor.”

 
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