The document discusses the challenges facing media center products and proposes an "Open Media Center" platform as a solution. Key points: - Current media center products try to converge PCs and consumer electronics into a single digital hub but keeping them universally compatible is enormously challenging for even the largest companies. - Philips proposes an open middleware model where companies jointly develop shared software to gradually migrate standalone products and lower costs through plug-in applications. - An open source operating system like Linux could form the basis with a joint development middleware and major proprietary applications as plug-ins, allowing participation from other open source communities. - This industry collaboration is needed as no single company has the resources to continuously innovate media

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An open heart to
the digital home
Not a week seems to go by without yet another ‘media center’ product being launched that claims
to be qualified to become the ‘center of our digital lives’. Media centers represent the convergence
of PCs and consumer electronics (CE) products such as DVDs, set-top boxes and MP3 players into a
single ‘digital hub’. However, there is a cloud on the horizon.While the leading current generation of
products, such as the Philips Showline Media Center (MCP9350i), is exciting and offers universal com-
patibility, keeping them that way is going to be an enormous challenge – even for the largest
companies.Therefore, Philips proposes an ‘Open Media Center’ platform based on a shared
development (and thus distributed cost) open middleware model.A universal model that would
ultimately allow participating companies to gradually migrate – yet still fully differentiate –
their existing standalone products through proprietary, plug-in applications.
By Andrew Woolls-King and Steven Keeping
Illustrations/photography: Philips, Storm Scott
Main article media centers
Right now, the personal computing (PC) and consumer electronics (CE) worlds are engaged
in an epic race that promises to transform electronic home entertainment for hundreds of
millions of consumers. The potential prize for the winner is to sell the products that deliver
all manner of digital content to the home for the next several decades. But it could be a prize
beyond the reach of any single company.
The phrase ‘media center’ essentially refers to a centralized, on-line digital hub – compatible
with any number of portable data and media storage devices – feeding content to a user
interface front-end. This content – such as video and audio – is transported through the home
via a high-speed, hard-wired (e.g. Ethernet) or wireless network. While the concept might
sound attractive, transforming it into a compelling product for everyone from grandparents to
teenagers is a daunting challenge.
Simplicity and convenience are critical. If the success of the original Philips Compact Disc and
today’s digital MP3 players and music libraries have taught us one thing: users love products
that give them simple, convenient and customizable access to their content via a delivering
mechanism that, frankly, just makes sense. Equally critical is the ability to handle any existing
or future content streams and formats. The current list includes high-definition TV, Internet,
Main article media centers
digital (including Internet) radio, MP3 music, audio and podcast downloads, pictures, home
videos and games.
Notable product examples to date include the Philips MCP9350 iMedia Center introduced at
IFA 2005. This delivers TV, Internet, music, video, photos and more to any room in the home.
In another example of innovative product development, Philips has released a wireless music
center, dubbed the WACS700, which enables consumers to store their entire CD collection on
a 40-GB hard disk and listen to it in any room via wireless streaming. Yes – it’s only for music
at present, but it represents a very realistic vision of the media center concept in action.
While both these products lead the way when it comes to contemporary media center
functionality – including the use of advanced, easy-to-use interfaces – nobody is claiming they
are yet genuinely universal solutions. But a comprehensive solution that is compatible with
absolutely anything the end user could throw at it, is what tomorrow’s consumer will both
demand and expect of their media centers.
Philips Research, Philips Consumer Electronics and Philips Semiconductors are rising to the
challenge by developing the roadmap for next-generation media centers. Exactly what these
second or possibly even third-generation devices will be like is still to be decided. What’s
certain is that the hardware, middleware and software will need to handle a proliferation of
digital media and deliver it to the consumer, quickly, conveniently and to the highest quality.
“ The harsh market reality is that in the world of
the 21st
century digital consumer, the content is king.”
Eric Kaashoek, Philips Comsumer Electronics
Frank vanTuijl (Philips Research) showing a prototype
of an Open Media Center.

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shopping, pay-per-view video and TV programming. And there are even hard drive-based
audiovisual products that include PC operating systems with digital hub-like multi-room
interface capabilities.”
“However, all these products have evolved along separate paths to deliver certain specific
functionality supremely well, and have then been adapted – almost as an afterthought,” explains
van Tuijl. “This inevitably compromises the product for attempting to do more than was
originally intended by conventional re-use or re-cycling of established software and standards.”
“That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with software re-cycling and sharing – it’s
commercially vital and actually what the Open Media Center aims to conserve and promote.
But it’s at the multiple – rather than single – PC/CE vendor scale that we’ll see the whole
market migrating in a new direction and developing new software better suited to the universal
media center ideal.”
Indeed, that the current products have successfully evolved from previous products is
testament to the pragmatism and design skill of the PC and CE manufacturers. But it also
suggests that no one is willing to risk developing a bespoke universal media center solution
alone – it’s just too expensive.
“It would demand tens to hundreds of millions of Euros in R&D investment – particularly on
the software side,” says van Tuijl. “And individual companies would have to master unfamiliar
technology if they hoped to create a media center that was truly all things to all users.
Even a company the size of Philips cannot be an expert in all the required disciplines.”
Towards an Open Media Center approach
Frank van Tuijl’s research team has already spent several years of exhaustive investigation
within Philips Research into media centers. “We realize we will find it very challenging to
develop universal next-generation media centers on our own,” van Tuijl says. “Yet media
centers are an enormous part of the future of consumer electronics that simply cannot be
ignored. Industry collaboration is the only viable way forward to migrate existing product
offerings into a harmonized, universal solution.”
This is how the Philips ‘Open Media Center’ idea was born. “It’s a concept centered around a
strategic, industry-wide collaboration involving an open source type of approach that we want
to openly propose to the world’s consumer electronics companies,” explains Erik Kaashoek.
“It’s a completely new paradigm. One built from the ground up to meet the needs of the end
application and that – who knows – could one day be extended to encompass a thriving open
source community as well?”
But it’s early days yet for the Open Media Center. “It’s a vision with no predetermined
architecture or technology road maps,” says Kaashoek, “but a vision that we believe is of
paramount importance to the CE sector. It will encourage the strategic migration of the best
features of each area of the industry into a new common, unified framework for the future.”
The operating system for an Open Media Center (OMC) product would also likely be based on
a non-proprietary OS such as Linux, with the joint development middleware in the center, and
major proprietary application plug-ins on top that could possibly be extended to include open-
source products as well (perhaps like shareware and freeware software in the PC world sits
Main article media centers Main article media centers
“The harsh market reality is that in the world of the 21st
century digital consumer, the content
is king,” says Erik Kaashoek, responsible at Philips Consumer Electronics (CE) for
migrating Philips Research projects into viable commercial products for CE. “Therefore any
future consumer media center product – if it is to enjoy universal success – needs to put the
needs of the consumer and their desire to intuitively access and organize this digital content
first, and allow the implementation to follow second. Mass-market consumers simply
won’t buy into tomorrow’s media centers if they don’t continue to make their lives
dramatically easier and can accommodate every form of digital media and content
without introducing complexity.”
Together we can achieve more
“The problem is that the engineering and financial resources required to sustain media center
innovation at its current rate is growing exponentially,” notes Frank van Tuijl, R&D project
leader for media centers with Philips Research.
In fact, it is a massive challenge, even for companies the size of Philips, and not without a
huge element of risk. Yet it doesn’t have to be this way. By working together, CE companies
could distribute the technological development and financial burden and achieve far more
for the consumer.
“Recent evolutions of many traditional PC and consumer electronics products are beginning
to encroach on each other’s territories,” illustrates van Tuijl. “Both the games console and PC
products offer video and music playback, and hard drive set-top boxes provide secure on-line
At the recent Consumer Electronics
Show (CES) in LasVegas, Philips
demonstrated a tablet TV front-end
wirelessly streaming SDTV
(Standard-Definition TV) digital video
from a so-called ‘MythTV‘ hub using the
latest state-of-the-art, low-power Philips
Semiconductor technology.A second TV
front-end has also been developed that
receives HDTV (High-Definition TV)
streams from the same hub over
Ethernet and displays them on a HDTV.
MythTV is a General Public License
(GPL) based, but proprietary ’plug-in‘
software product that allows developers
to create an experimental ’home media
convergence box‘ using open-source
software and operating systems.
“MythTV’s capabilities include pause,
fast-forward and rewind of live TV;
installation of multiple video capture
cards to record more than one program
at a time to different hard disks, and
support of multiple front-end clients
each with a common view of all
available programs,” explains Eric
Persoon of Philips Advanced
Semiconductors Laboratories.“The
software also includes other useful
functionality such as a picture-viewing
application, a DVD viewer and a music
playing application that supports MP3.”
The CES application was based on the
Nexperia STB810 semiconductor sys-
tem solution.This combines the Philips
PNX8550 home entertainment engine, a
Linux operating system and all required
AV codecs.The result is a unit that
can provide video telephony, time-shift
recording, DVD playback, personal video
recording, network connectivity and
Voice-over-IP.
The ‘mythical’
set-top box
WACS700 music center
MCP9350i media center
Nexperia is the Philips brand for a unique
group of products that streamline
development of next-generation,
connected multimedia appliances.

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“What format the common middleware – i.e. joint development software stack – would take,
would have to be carefully considered. That said, the joint development model would in my
opinion be entirely capable of supporting a robust IPR protection mechanism for the plug-ins,”
Engelfriet adds. “The challenge would be ensuring that this IPR plug-in mechanism maintained
a properly secure distance between the open and proprietary components, but did not inhibit
their ability to freely communicate with the middleware during operation.”
Chasing the big prize
In the longer term, Philips believes the Open Media Center vision is a viable way for the CE
market to meet market expectations for what next-generation, universal media center
solutions could and should be. While it does not intend to aggressively thrust the concept on
the world’s major CE vendors, it does intend to begin tentative discussions and to highlight why
it would be the best solution for CE.
“According to our research, 80 percent of the profits from a next-generation open media
center product would come from the plug-ins,” says van Tuijl. “This means companies could
concentrate their product differentiation efforts there, while minimizing commercial risk on the
middleware by collaborating. There would be absolutely no competitive advantage for any firm
to develop the middleware on its own.”
“This means the Open Media Center concept is about as perfect a win-win for CE companies
and consumers as can be expected in the real world,” summarizes Kaashoek. “It will create the
kind of competition that will drive the on-going development of continually improving and new
innovative applications, but at the same time give consumers enormous choice and value. This
means the CE firms get access to what could be the largest consumer electronics market the
world has ever seen, at a migratory pace that is technically achievable and commercially low
risk, and in a way that will give consumers ever widening access to products that exactly meet
their needs at a price level they can afford. That is what the Philips Open Media Center vision
is all about.”
Main article media centers Main article media centers
alongside major applications from established vendors), as illustrated in figure 1 on the left.
Philips already has a number of proof-of-concept applications where proprietary solutions run
on open-source software such as Linux in a commercially protected product. Examples are the
Linux OS-based Nexperia STB810 system solution (see box ‘The ‘mythical set-top box’) and
the ABISS system architecture (see box ‘Open source and proprietary software in harmony’.
Both products adapt low-cost, open-source Linux software from the PC world to fit the needs
of the CE space without sacrificing intellectual-property right (IPR) protection. Such an ‘open
source’ and CE alignment could prove invaluable to the development of a true media center,
whether a Linux or proprietary OS was used.
The global aim would be to produce a single, modular, standard platform that really does offer
the best of all worlds (which will be crucial to consumer acceptance). This would be able to
support each individual company’s proprietary solutions as almost ‘plug-in’ type products that
will have gradually migrated over time from their standalone contemporary cousins.
For its part, Philips has already developed some illustrative plug-in software applications
designed to customize the output of a media center (whether existing or in the future) to suit
an individual’s precise needs. (See box “Your personal Clint Eastwood Channel”.)
Protecting IPR
Despite the optimism, turning the Open Media Center vision into a reality in the fiercely
competitive world of consumer electronics won’t be easy or risk-free. There will be enormous
competitive constraints; chief among which is how CE firms will protect their intellectual-
property rights (IPR) within such a vast and far-reaching, essentially software-based program.
“One way an Open Media Center could approach this is by breaking down the application into
a common middleware platform upon which customized and IPR protected proprietary plug-in
applications can be supported,” explains Arnoud Engelfriet, a patent attorney and IPR specialist
within Philips Intellectual Property and Standards (IP&S).
“ Industry collaboration is the only viable way forward to migrate
existing product offerings into a harmonized, universal solution. ”
Frank vanTuijl, Philips Research,
Frank vanTuijl l Philips Research l frank.van.tuijl@philips.com
Extra info www.research.philips.com/password l media centers l open invention network
Imagine how compelling it would be
for Clint Eastwood fans if their media
center could scan the channels for
Clint’s films and collate them into a
special ‘Clint Eastwood Channel’.
With the Philips Flexchannels plug-in
– designed to run on an open, Linux
OS-based media center – they could do
just that. Flexchannels is a way to create
personalized TV channels.
The system records the TV content that
matches the profile of the user-defined
channel (e.g.“films starring or directed
by Clint Eastwood”), creates a sequence
for replay, and deletes content when it
has been viewed. It is also possible to
supplement the recorded material with
on-demand content.
Other illustrative plug-ins for the Open
Media Center include ‘Distributed
Collaborative Recommender’ and
‘Movie-in-a-Minute’.The Recommender
gathers personal TV program ratings
from users around the world using a
technique called ‘collaborative filtering’
and suggests personalized
recommendations from users with
similar viewing profiles. Movie-in-a-
Minute is an automatically generated
short preview of a recording. It helps
the user to select a program by showing
sample video fragments in a quick and
entertaining way.
Your personal ‘Clint
Eastwood’ channel
Application
Plugin
OMC framework
OMC Application Plug-ins
Application
Plugin
Application
Plugin
OMC Middleware API
Mediaplayer
Graphics
Database
Communication
...
AV API + OS API
AV Streaming Linux OS
Overlay
Video
Audio
Storage
Network
CPU
OMC framework
Required Support Libraries
AV Streaming Platform
Basic OS Functionality
Figure 1
An example of where Philips has incorporated its proprietary software
alongside open-source middleware (in this case Linux) is its Active Block
I/O Scheduling System (ABISS).This technology – which essentially enables
real-time hard disk access at low power for reliable data intensive streaming
(e.g. high-density video) – will be critical to ensure a media center can pro-
vide seamless broadcast capabilities. Particularly when asked to
multi-task due to access requests made by other applications and users
during operation.
The ABISS system architecture is shown in figure 2. A set of modifications
to the Linux kernel provides the basic ABISS framework.The scheduler itself
can be implemented as a Loadable Kernel Module, which interfaces with the
framework using the standard Linux module interface. Philips wanted to
allow any application to use the ABISS functionality and allow third parties
to provide proprietary schedulers with the ABISS framework, while protect-
ing the IPR in its own scheduler.
Open source and proprietary software in harmony
Application Library Daemon
Scheduler
Linux
kernel
ABISS
Policy 1
Policy 2
Figure 2
OMC reference
architecture