A wrapper and broker model for collaboration between a set-top box and home service gateway

摘要

If interactive digital television (iDTV) and residential service gateway (RG) could converge, i.e. to share services and resources, add-on values could be created. We propose a wrapper (adaptor) and a broker model with cooperative interfaces and a communication mechanism to support the collaboration between instances of iDTV and RG. The proposed approach has a higher extensibility, and it is better suited to an object oriented approach. Our experimental target iDTV middleware is DVB/MHP Java Profile, and the Residential Gateway middleware is the open service gateway initiative (OSGi). The MHP and OSGi are implemented on a single Java virtual machine. The MHP application manager is wrapped as a bundle, and a broker is responsible for communication between the MHP and the OSGi. Hence, application developers do not need to know beforehand which services are on the iDTV or RG, and services are discovered dynamically.