Advanced Television

NetFront for EKT

September 5, 2016

EKT, specialist in the design and manufacture of Set Top Box & smart TV solutions and ACCESS Co, a global provider of advanced software technologies to the digital TV, automotive, mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) markets, announced the start of a long term cooperation whereby EKT will deploy ACCESS’ Chromium-based NetFront Browser BE as part of its solidTV software solution.
The ACCESS HTML5 technology solution will become a core component within EKT’s solidTV, a comprehensive STB middleware that can be deployed as a stand-alone solution or as the “engine” for third party HTML5 based User Interfaces or applications.
“By including ACCESS’ NetFront Browser BE within our solidTV middleware, EKT now supports HbbTV2.0, improved HTML5 compliance and the latest DLNA connectivity all from a single vendor packaged as SDKs that we can quickly integrate,” said Richard Smith, Founder and CEO at EKT. He continued “ACCESS is a world leader in HTML5 technologies and advanced technologies including DLNA technology components. Partnering with them enables us to concentrate on our core competences and improve our solidTV middleware. By taking pre-packaged SDKs for out target platforms, our engineers can focus on specific customer customisation and system integration.”
NetFront Browser BE has been specifically engineered to provide high standards compliance and to leverage the Chromium HTML5 engine. ACCESS offers improved resilience needed in embedded environments and support for extensions needed for the Digital TV market, such as HbbTV 2.0 and UK Freeview Play. NetFront Browser BE is built upon the ACCESS experience deployed in providing software for over 1.5 billion consumer electronics devices deployed worldwide. NetFront Browser BE can also be extended with optional modules for use in Operator environments requiring HTML5 Remote User Interface (RUI) or DLNA VidiPathTM (CVP-2) capabilities.
“ACCESS has a history of innovation, and we are very pleased to add EKT, one of the rising stars of the Set-Top Box and smart TV business, to our customer portfolio,” says Dr Neale Foster, COO and VP Global Sales at ACCESS Europe. “EKT’s control of the STB middleware platform, combined with our expertise in building browsers that adapt to a wide range of devices and supplied conveniently as a software development kit, makes for a truly compelling partnership to serve this fast paced market.”
EKT will gradually introduce the updated solidTV solution with the ACCESS NetFront Browser BE to new and existing customers in the coming months. It will be available on a range of EKT designed hardware platforms for IPTV, OTT and hybrid.

Categories: Articles, Broadcast, In Home, Middleware, STB