… not about how the content gets to the TV. That’s just technology and the end-user could not care less.
This fact is highly reflected in our technology and especially the new generation Zignal client technology that we just announced.
Our vision has always been aligned towards offering a true television experience. Our primary criteria concerning user-interface are speed and simplicity. The consumer is used to being entertained on the sofa, with only the remote control to deal with. If the user-interface is slow, then it does not represent a satisfactory television experience. - This we know.
The new generation of our Zignal platform has a completely rewritten user-interface technology, based on input and experience from previous versions, the industry and our own customer deployments.
Our previous version was fast, but the new one is about 8-10 times faster. - Not bad at all.
It is interesting that we now face new types of challenges, as we have solved the speed issue in rendering rich UI. The two challenges we face now are both outside of our scope or technology domain, but we need to work closely with industry vendors on solving them.
This is a) the IPTV channel zapping scenario and b) infrared communication speed between the set-top box and the remote control.
The IPTV Channel Zapping Scenario
I will blog a specific entry on this challenge, as I want to call for action on this matter. Solving this matter has been a pet project of mine for some time and I have worked out several scenarios with some of the Industria engineers on how this can be achieved closest to real-time. Watch this space for further updates…
IR Remote Control Speed Scenarios
It’s interesting, that when we demonstrate the speed of the Zignal interface, we need to hook up an external USB keyboard, because our user-interface and rendering technologies are actually faster than the infrared communication drivers can handle in the set-top boxes. This needs to be fixed by the set-top box manufactures, but we are making sure that our voice is heard by the vendors of both IR remote controls and set-top boxes.
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