Liberty Global, Comcast to use Metrological browser enhancements

Liberty Global and Comcast will use new, open-source browser enhancements from Metrological to support enhanced IP, browser-based services and applications for set-top boxes.

Announcing the deals, Metrological said it created the new open-source browser enhancements and will contribute them to the Reference Design Kit (RDK) software stack for use across the pay TV industry.

Liberty Global, which currently uses an earlier version of Metrological’s browser, plans to upgrade to these new enhancements for its RDK-based Horizon TV platform.

Comcast will trial the STB browser software enhancements for use on its RDK-based X1 Platform later this year.

Metrological said that the STB browser software enables high performance rendering of HTML5 apps and next-generation user interfaces. It is designed to increase browser performance, with a smaller software footprint, and requires less memory usage.

“This browser capability will enable us to more easily customize user experiences and offer high performance TV services, such as our integrated app experience based on the Metrological Application Platform, to our customers in ways that weren’t previously possible,” said Balan Nair, executive vice-president and chief technology officer for Liberty Global.

Albert Dahan, co-founder and CTO of Metrological said: “Our customers have been looking for ways to solve the performance challenges of embedded browsers on STBs. As operators embrace more open-source browser technologies, they have experienced a lack of performance and features; we contributed a suite of enhancements to open source that makes apps run as if they were developed natively.”

Metrological is exhibiting at IBC on stand 14.E25