RVU Alliance welcomes first promoter members

BEAVERTON, USA: The RVU Alliance announced that Motorola Inc., Humax, Thomson, Pace plc, Entropic Communications Inc., NXP Semiconductors and JetHead Development Inc. have joined as the first promoter members.

“The newly formed RVU Alliance is capturing the interest of a wide range of companies representing content service providers, consumer electronics manufacturers and technology firms,” said Henry Derovanessian, chairman of the RVU Alliance board of directors. “We welcome other companies to look into the RVU technology and see what it can do for them.”

Motorola’s Home & Networks Mobility business designs, manufactures, sells, installs, and services digital and Internet Protocol (IP) video and broadcast network interactive set-top boxes, end-to-end video delivery systems, broadband access infrastructure platforms, and associated data and voice customer premise equipment to cable television and telecom service providers.

Humax made its successful entry into the digital set-top box market in 1997, and has been a major OEM supplier worldwide. Now, Humax is a recognized world leader in the category, exporting advanced set-top boxes to over 90 countries. With this experience as its foundation, Humax is entering into the Convergence consumer electronics market with digital TV and home media server products.

"As today's home digital products continue to blur the lines with IT-related technologies, we are rapidly entering the era of Convergence consumer electronics,” said Dr. Jong-Uk Kim, CTO at Humax. “This transition provides Humax with new and exciting opportunities. For Humax, our participation and leadership in the inevitable evolution towards Convergence consumer electronics means taking a proactive role in partnerships such as the RVU Alliance."

Thomson is a worldwide leader of services to content creators. “As an active supporter of global networking initiatives like DLNA and UPnP for the proliferation of content around the home, Thomson applauds the RVU Alliance for tackling the challenges inherent to providing a consistent user experience across an ever broadening range of devices and platforms, be they operator provided equipment or CE gear. We are proud to join its efforts,” said Georges Laplanche, senior vice president of the Connect Division at Thomson.

Pace plc is a leading technology developer for the global pay TV industry, working across satellite, cable, IPTV and terrestrial platforms. Pace has one of the world's most experienced specialist engineering teams, developing intelligent and innovative products and services for both pay TV operators and retail markets across the world.

"The RVU Alliance offers Pace an opportunity to participate and contribute in the development of new technologies and platforms that will support our customers with the strategic vision of their business. We are excited about RVU's role in developing what may be a groundbreaking enabler to deliver a rich user experience," said Mike Pulli, president of Pace Americas, Inc.

Entropic Communications is a leading provider of silicon for enabling home entertainment networking. Entropic’s technology significantly changes the way high-definition television quality video and other multi-media content such as movies, music, games and photos are brought into and delivered throughout the home.

“The RVU Alliance’s powerful user interface paradigm looks set to improve and simplify the user experience as consumers connect a larger number and a greater range of video-capable devices together,” said Tom Lookabaugh, CTO at Entropic. “As innovators in home connectivity, we at Entropic are excited to participate in an application that not only improves consumers’ lives, but also relies on and exploits high performance networking, like the MoCA networks that many service providers are adopting as the backbone of their in-home offerings.”

NXP is a leading provider of semiconductors, system solutions and software for global TV and set-top box applications. “Creating a consistent user experience is key to developing a truly connected entertainment experience and we are excited to be leading this initiative as part of the RVU Alliance,” said Lewis Brewster, senior vice president and general manager, Business Line Set-top Box, NXP Semiconductors.

“The unique synergies we have with our digital TV and set-top box solutions provide a perfect platform to advance the use of remote user interface technology and therefore create great opportunities to drive mass market adoption.”

JetHead has been instrumental in the development of RVU technology since its inception and is able to offer developers, under license, a full RVU compatible client application.

“We are very pleased to see the formation of the RVU Alliance and to be leading the development of RVU technology,” said Ben Payne, vice president of Engineering at JetHead. “Our RVU Test Server and RVU Client Application provide RVU developers with an excellent basis from which to build their final CE devices. We look forward to seeing the deployment of RVU compatible products in 2010.”