cineca banner imageJTVOS 1.0.1: a free interactive set top box firmware


What's JTVOS-project?

The aim of JTVOS project is to build a free (as freedom) stb middleware useful for multimedia consumption and interactivity.
The medium term focus is about:

Where are the screenshot!?

Yeah! we do have them for sure.. Give them a quick glance here!

Where JTVOS is now?

At late january 2008, we have been releasing version 1.0.1.

At may 2007, we have been ported and enhanced Sun's GPL Java virtual machine Personal Basis Profile on a Power PC SOC set top box hardware (DreamBox 7020).

Java CVM running on Linux supplies the platform indipendent executing environment for digital television applications with network connection, gui, memory access, extended api support for smart card and audio video decoding.
A BusyBox collection of tools supply a remote shell for development and debug purposes.

What can i do, now, with JTVOS?

Three simple things:

  1. If you have a DgStation Cubecafe 250S STB, you can flash your DgStation,box and watch some good old television from satellite and then see the first java application. You can see in action here.
  2. Now it's your turn: you can write a java application on your host computer (with the build package) and test it on the box; this is what the IP address is for!
  3. If you are an hacker and want to port/enhance/bugfix the JTVOS middleware, you can download the source package, then study it, modify, tweak and build it to your pleasure! Please contribute back so we can all grow together!

Fine! Where are the docs, the API?!

Actually, that's a good question! we do have some docs here and there.. But we still don't have appropriate docs on the Java API. you could of course see the "real thing" browsing the source code.. BTW if you want, you can help too documenting or suggesting use cases who need more libraries! (if there's code is better!)

To whom it may concern now:

To whom it may concern tomorrow:

All the citizens who are worried for their freedom in the digital world we are going to live in.

When JTVOS-project was started?

At the end of 2006 Sun released some of its code bases on Java technologies under GPL licensing.
Among them there is Personal Basis Profile CVM Java Virtual Machine code base that was realeased for the phoneme community project aimed to smart phones and pdas but the original design of these Java technologies was for digital television set top boxes and decoders, didn't you know? google it ;-)
Many private companies already provides these java virtual machine technologies for digital television with a closed source, proprietary APIs (if not MHP), royalties based business models.

Current status:

The first porting is started, basics api enhancements are occuring right now, a lot of work still necessary to realize a GUI for basic set top box functions: tuning, channels list management, channel search, ... this part of the project is identifyed as JTVOS-Navigator.
Please look at this sample schema to get an overal idea:

jtvos schema

Which hardware platform is currently supported?

JTVOS-1000 targets STBx25xx from IBM, you can find different hardware providers for Linux set top boxes based on it, among them: DgStation 250S .

This particulary build works on DgStation Cubecafe 250S.

A previous version was suited for Dream Multimedia DM7000 but actually is not supported anymore. We plan to release quickly support for all the PowerPc Soc based STB in the next future, but actually it not available (you could always help us patching the source package and telling us the changes!)

Others examples of platforms available on the market and possible targets are the Nec's Emma2 or ATI's Xilleon, if someone has the willing to start a porting for another platform can contact us for suggestions and to get a codename like JTVOS-1020.

What is the software license?

It's GPL v2, being based mainly on GPL v2 code bases. GPL enforces strong collaboration and fair usage from all the parties involved, reduces open forks (forbids the proprietary ones..)

Is this project an open source MHP / GEM / BD-J aka Blu-ray disc java/ JavaTV implementation ?

No, but all of these standards are based on PBP so JTVOS is the suitable base to start clean room implementations of the above standards, we also suggest to follow these specifications while adding new apis and functionalities.
We want to add to PBP a minimum low level set of api exposing the hardware functionalities to make possible to implement high level api like MHP and the others adding only pure java code to the JTVOS-Navigator.

Where can i download the firmware:

You can grab here the basic firmware for a DgStation Cubecafe 250S and the source code of the complete build environment (300MB)
You need to apply for a password, leaving, at this page, your valid email address.

What about JTVOS-Navigator?

This is the GUI with which you'll be able to use all the functionalities of the STB.
Today is just an idea, it will soon have its own concurrent open source repository

Where is the community working on JTVOS?

You can join us today here on the cin-ecast mailing list

I still have a question unanswered! Can you help me?

Please, ask it on the aforementioned mailing list, please! maybe the reply could be useful for everyone!

Are there other open projects from Cineca related to digital television?

Yes, there are mainly two: JustDvb-It a carousel server and Yambo a "fully fledged" XML browser; you can find it here