Online Media
<company> A company formed by Acorn Computer Group plc to exploit the ARM
RISC in television set-top box decoders. They are wooing British
Telecommunications plc to use the box in some of its video on demand trials.
The box will be based on an ARM8 core with additional circuits to enable MPEG to
be decoded in software - possibly dedicated instructions for interpolation,
inverse DCT or Huffman table extraction. They have already moved audio MPEG to
sillicon. The box will use Acorn's RISC OS operating system as the control
environment and is also looking at putting Oracle and Microword on it. Online
will reduce component numbers and therefore cost by transferring functions
presently on boards into the single RISC chip.
The interactive set-top boxes are not limited to the television - personal
computer videoconferencing and extended networking are being developed. Acorn
already has partnerships with Bell Northern Research and Northern Telecom
Limited, News International, Alcatel NV and its majority shareholder Ing C
Olivetti & Co SpA.
The company is presently wholly owned by Acorn, but eventually expects to bring
in external investment. Online will start a four phase trial in Cambridge with
Cambridge Cable Co, Advanced Telecommunications Modules Ltd. - the Hermann
Hauser company promising super-cheap Asynchronous Transfer Mode - and Anglia
Television, later this year.
[Article by nobody@tandem.com cross-posted from tandem.news.computergram,
1994-07-7].
(1997-05-14)
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