<company> A company formed by Acorn Computer Group plc to
exploit the ARM RISC in television set-top box decoders.
They are wooing British Telecommunications plc to use the
box in some of its video on demand trials.
The box will be based on an ARM8 core with additional
circuits to enable MPEG to be decoded in software - possibly
dedicated instructions for interpolation, inverse DCT or
Huffman table extraction. They have already moved audio
MPEG to sillicon. The box will use Acorn's RISC OS
operating system as the control environment and is also
looking at putting Oracle and Microword on it. Online
will reduce component numbers and therefore cost by
transferring functions presently on boards into the single
RISC chip.
The interactive set-top boxes are not limited to the
television - personal computer videoconferencing and extended
networking are being developed. Acorn already has
partnerships with Bell Northern Research and Northern
Telecom Limited, News International, Alcatel NV and its
majority shareholder Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA.
The company is presently wholly owned by Acorn, but eventually
expects to bring in external investment. Online will start a
four phase trial in Cambridge with Cambridge Cable Co,
Advanced Telecommunications Modules Ltd. - the Hermann Hauser
company promising super-cheap Asynchronous Transfer Mode - and
Anglia Television, later this year.
[Article by nobody@tandem.com cross-posted from
tandem.news.computergram, 1994-07-7].
(1997-05-14)
Nearby terms:
On-Line Analytical Processing « Online Computer Library Center, Inc. « On-Line Computer system « Online Media » On-line Process Synthesizer » Online Public Access Catalog » On-Line Transaction Processing
