Integration and testing vendor Tata Elxsi recently announced that it has licensed the Comcast Reference Design Kit in order to speed up the development of next-generation TV products.
Previously announced licensees for the Reference Design Kit (RDK) include itaas, Entropic, Broadcom, Motorola and S3 Group.
Comcast’s goal with the RDK is to cut down the development cycle for new set-top boxes from two years to one year, or even under one year. The Comcast RDK was developed internally using open-source components and by working with various vendors. The RDK is a community-based project that allows developers, vendors and cable operators to use a defined stack of software on one layer in order to provision set-top boxes and gateways.
The RDK allows all of the interested parties to develop once and then scale across multiple environments – in the CableCard/QAM/MEPG-2 world of today, as well as in the IP environment of tomorrow.
“Tata Elxsi’s long association with Comcast and experience with the RDK and tru2way technologies coupled with our systems integration experience for advanced media gateways and multi-screen digital TV devices will enable customers to cut down their time to market significantly,” said M. Thangarajan, vice president and head of Tata Elxsi’s broadcast business unit. “Customers will benefit from our global presence across North America, Latam, Europe and Asia and our world-class engineering teams in India, allowing for rapid integration and deployment with lowered development costs and risk.”
Tata Elxsi brings experience with the development and integration over open platforms, such as Linux, HTML5 and QT, as well as proprietary platforms, such as Microsoft SilverLight and Adobe Flash, to the RDK environment.
“Our goal is to make the RDK available to companies such as Tata Elxsi in order to accelerate development of an advanced software solution throughout the industry and across geographies,” said Steve Reynolds, senior vice president of CPE and home networking for Comcast. “Support from Tata Elxsi and others is helping to pave the way for broader industry adoption and deployment of this platform that enables developers, operators and device vendors to create rich, multi-screen TV home entertainment experiences and bring them to consumers faster.”
