Opera for connected TVs

Opera Software is ringing in 2011 with the latest in technology, showcasing Opera technology for TVs and connected devices during the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2011 in Las Vegas.

Opera is leading the Internet TV revolution and will be embedded on millions of connected televisions, set-top boxes and Blu-ray players in 2011. This opens the door for content providers to adopt advanced web technologies as a seamless means to bring their content to millions of end users running Opera on their TVs.

The company’s vision is to bring the best Internet experience, regardless of the device, to the user. Opera delivers quality end-user experiences while maintaining fast performance, a small footprint and consistent feature sets with low hardware and power requirements. Opera’s support for devices includes the latest developments in web technology for tablets, connected TVs and set-top boxes, gaming consoles, vehicles, portable navigation, business terminals and even home appliances.

Inside Opera’s TV Solutions

Opera is a key enabler making content and applications available on TVs. Opera embraces open and industry standards, such as HTML5, W3C widgets, OIPF and HbbTV, giving players in the connected TV space the insurance that they can deliver any live or on-demand content or service, on any set top box or TV, from any source. Technology, coupled with strong industry partnerships, make the Opera Devices Software Developer Kit easy to implement on a platform, and to integrate with streaming media players, conditional access systems and personal video recorders.

Opera Devices SDK 2.9 builds on all the strengths of Opera Devices SDK 2.8 adding increased HTML5, OPIF and HbbTV compatibility combined with enhanced performance.

New SDK features include:

* HTML5: Opera has long-supported modern web standards such as SVG, Canvas and CSS, and version 2.8 (September 2010) introduced support for the HTML5 video and audio elements and for hardware accelerated CSS Transforms. In version 2.9, this is complemented with additional HTML5 features required to run webpages as local applications on a device by implementing the following standards: o Application Cache o Web Workers o Web Storage o Server-sent events o Cross-document messaging

* Full Internet TV User Interface (Alpha): End users can take advantage of Opera’s embedded TV UI to access “long tail”” content bringing a full Internet experience to devices in their living rooms.

* Intel X86 JavaScript JIT and ARM JavaScript JIT: With the new JavaScript “”Just-In-Time”” compilers for Intel and ARM based platforms, Opera brings world-class JavaScript performance to devices with limited resources.

* HbbTV Pre-Integration: Opera’s HbbTV add-on brought full HbbTV compliance to customers in version 2.8: with the new version, this option has been expanded and enhanced. A new and more powerful API covers scenarios where HbbTV is implemented together with other uses of the web engine, such as rendering of applications, widgets and EPGs on the device.

“”The age of passive television viewing is over as consumers are now accessing interactive content with the click of a button,”” said Christen Krogh, Chief Development Officer, Opera Software. “”The optimized Opera web experience offers opportunities for OEMs and service providers to take the next generation of Internet protocol TV services into living rooms around the world.””

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