Metrological Lands Liberty Global, Comcast for Open Source Browser Enhancements

Metrological says it will provide Liberty Global and Comcast with open-source browser enhancements that will improve their ability to support enhanced Internet Protocol (IP) browser-based services and applications for set-top boxes (STBs). The company says it will contribute the enhancements to the Reference Design Kit (RDK) software stack (see "Metrological Joins RDK"). The browser software resides in the STB and enables high-performance rendering of HTML5 apps and next-generation user interfaces (UIs) across STBs, Metrological says. The software will help improve browser performance, with a smaller software footprint, and requires significantly less memory usage, the company adds. It relies upon open-source "WebKit for Wayland" components to render UIs and provide better windows management to control multiple applications and resource management. Liberty Global, which uses an earlier version of Metrological's browser, will upgrade to these new enhancements for its RDK-based Horizon TV platform (see "Liberty Expands Its Horizons"). Comcast plans to trial the STB browser software enhancements for use on its RDK-based X1 Platform later this year (see "Comcast Unwraps X1"). "At Liberty Global we set out to optimize the browser to deliver a high performance consumer experience with support for rich UIs and HTML5 apps on Horizon TV," said Balan Nair, executive vice president and CTO for Liberty Global. "This browser capability will enable us to more easily customize user experiences and offer high performance TV services, such as our integrated app experience based on the Metrological Application Platform, to our customers in ways that weren't previously possible."