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Tuesday August 4, 2009
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 On Monday, Broadcom, Cisco, DirecTV and Samsung announced the "RVU Alliance," a consortium designed to provide "pixel-perfect" graphics to a number of devices around the home.
Bored yet? I can see why. But underneath the rather blasé surface of the press release is an interesting direction for your home media network, especially if you subscribe to DirecTV.
Here's the key point, according to the Alliance: "[The] RVU Alliance's pixel accurate RUI technology will provide an identical user experience on all RVU-based thin client CE devices throughout the connected home, including digital TVs (DTVs), digital media adapters (DMAs) and set-top boxes (STBs)."
"Thin client" appears to be the operative word here. Virtually all cable and satellite systems require roughly identical set-top boxes to be placed around the home, in every room that contains a TV -- if you want the full-featured functionality of a DVR or other device, I mean.
But the RVU Alliance appears set up to make the main home gateway into
even more of a server, streaming video out to other devices throughout
the home, including Samsung TVs and DirecTV satellite boxes. It sounds
like Samsung TVs might not even need a CableCard or something similar
to pull this content, provided they have an RVU chip from Broadcom
built in. (It's important to note, however, that only Samsung's set-top
box unit is currently supporting the technology.)
It also means that the interface that you would see on your main set-top box is replicated across other devices in the home.
"We believe
both consumers and service providers will embrace consumer electronic
equipment with RVU technology because it enables a high quality digital
entertainment experience throughout the connected home," said Rômulo
Pontual, DirecTV's chief technology officer, in a statement. "We are
committed to the RVU technology and are planning to deploy it in media
servers and clients beginning early in 2010."
The RVU Alliance members are also promoting members of the DLNA, a protocol to pull content from compliant devices throughout the home.
Bottom line: while there's no critical mass here, the combination of DirecTV and Samsung's set-top box division means that future DirecTV implementations could offer a single gateway and several cheap, low-cost extenders. It's an interesting concept, and I'd like to see where it goes.
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