Category: Industry Buzz - March 8, 2004 
By Alexander Grundner
We caught up with Auro Tripathy, Director of Technical Marketing at Digital 5 and asked him a few questions about their middleware software powering next-generation networked entertainment devices from Gateway, Netgear, and others.

Tell us a little bit about Digital 5.
Digital 5's (D5) groundbreaking consumer electronic networking middleware technology allows Consumer Electronics ODMs/OEMs to deliver products with a clear consumer value proposition: Use your television or audio components to seamlessly enjoy the audio, pictures, and video content stored on your PC or your media server. D5’s customers with products in retail/on-line stores include Gateway, Netgear, GoVideo, Apex Digital, Orient Power (Oritron) and Amoi (Amoisonic). Premium content partnership include AOL (Radio@AOL), Real (RHAPSODY) and Napster.

How is Digital 5’s technology powering current connected home entertainment devices?
D5’s technology can stream DVD-quality content from the PC to connected home entertainment devices. D5’s superior wireless streaming technology adapts the bit-rate of the compressed video stream to match the available channel bandwidth, conceals errors introduced by RF noise from microwave ovens and cordless phones, protects the content from piracy, and provides total privacy for the consumer. This leads to a smooth, secure, artifact-free, and jitter-free experience in the living-room for content stored on the PC or cached on the PC from the internet.
Additionally, D5’s PC-hosted software can reformat and rescale the content to match the playback capabilities of the low-cost home-entertainment device; for example, MPEG4 content can be reformatted for legacy MPEG-2 playback capable devices such as net worked DVD players.
With an end-to-end approach to media delivery, quality of service, and security, D5’s middleware creates the best media experience for the consumer.

How is Digital 5 incorporating industry standards like: Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) and Intel’s Networked Media Product Requirements (NMPR), which help to facilitate the development of interoperable digital home products?
D5, a UPnP Forum member, works closely with Intel to derive fast, efficient, and low footprint UPnP stacks for deeply embedded consumer devices running real-time operating systems and consumer-grade Linux. To conform to Intel’s NMPR, D5 periodically tests its products against the Intel Conformance Test Tools (CTT) and the Interoperability Test Tools (ITT). Additionally, D5 powered consumer devices work with other popular UPnP servers such as the Real Networks RHAPSODY server and the Microsoft’s Windows Media Connect server (a.k.a. “Fjord”).

Where do you see the digital media adapter market going in the next three years and how will Digital 5 be apart of that?
In 2003, D5 powered digital media adapters and networked DVD players enabled consumers to enjoy their personal content (video clips of birthdays and anniversaries, thousands of digital pictures, and ripped audio CDs) in their living room. In 2004, D5 enabled streaming premium audio content (RHAPSODY, Radio@AOL, and Napster 2.0) securely beyond the PC to the living room.
By continuing to forge partnerships with content and service providers, D5 will enable Internet video delivery beyond the PC into the living room. Additionally, D5 is actively engaged with companies building connected PVRs and other recordable devices to streaming content in and out of them.
Over the next three years, D5’s core technology will be embedded in all media centric devices including speakers, AV receivers, gaming platforms, TVs, etc.

Aside from digital media adapters, is Digital 5’s middleware software solution being used (or planning to be used) in any other types of consumer electronic devices?
In addition to the connected PVRs mentioned above, D5 is actively engaged in several exciting consumer devices (both portable and fixed) where content is securely stored or securely streamed in to or out of media-centric devices. D5’s secure streamer and quality of service manager guarantees that the user’s media experience will be the best by fully exploiting the media capabilities of the device and the available bandwidth of the home network.