Internet TV solution based on MiniGUI/mDolphin/mPeer technology

Internet TV (IPTV), also known as interactive network TV, is a new technology that uses the infrastructure of the Internet, takes TV as the main terminal device, integrates multiple technologies such as the Internet, multimedia, and communications, and provides home users with a variety of interactive digital media services including digital TV through the Internet Protocol (IP). There are many Internet TV software solutions based on various embedded operating systems on the market. This article focuses on describing the Internet TV solution constructed on the embedded Linux platform based on MiniGUI/mDolphin/mPeer technology.

No matter what kind of embedded device, as long as it involves user interaction, GUI is the basis of the software part of the device, and network TV is no exception. There are many GUI systems to choose from on the embedded Linux platform, such as X Window, Qt/Embedded and MiniGUI, and the performance and resource usage of MiniGUI are obviously better than other graphics systems.

The core of Internet TV is the web browser, which enables users to browse websites, download, etc. The mDolphin browser used in this solution uses the WebKit open source browser parsing and rendering engine (also the core engine used by Apple Safari browser and Google Chrome browser), ensuring that the browser product has the same web parsing and rendering capabilities as the browser on the PC, thus ensuring a high starting point for the product.

Another core of Internet TV should be a large number of application software, such as games, audio and video playback, etc. This solution also introduces an embedded J2SE solution - mPeer, which introduces the Java language into the development of Internet TV applications, allowing developers to develop Linux programs based on MiniGUI (C/C++) as well as use Java.

It is relatively difficult to develop application software based on MiniGUI. Developers not only need to develop Linux programs, but also need to be proficient in MiniGUI API to develop. However, the advantage of this development method is also obvious, that is, the developed application software has better performance. Therefore, some key application software, such as browsers, emails, media players and other application software, should be developed directly on Linux and MiniGUI. The mPeer solution provides a universal platform for Java programs, which can run various J2SE applications that meet the specifications. Using Java to develop applications can bring great convenience, and huge existing technology and resource support can be obtained in terms of talents, community resources, development tools, etc. The combination of these two development methods increases development flexibility while greatly reducing difficulty and saving resources.

In addition, the efficiency problem of embedded Java, which has been criticized by many users, has also been solved under the cooperation of MiniGUI and mPeer. This solution is based on the compact and flexible MiniGUI. The performance of Java application software implemented on it is completely comparable to that of C/C++ local application software based on X Window and Qt/Embedded. The overall architecture of this solution is shown in Figure 1.

This solution is based on the embedded Linux operating system and runs various possible application software on it. It uses the multi-process support provided by MiniGUI 3.0 to implement a multi-process graphical program operating environment, thereby improving the overall stability of the system. Even if a single application process fails, it will not affect the operation of the entire system. This solution can download and run application software online, and facilitates online upgrades of application software and systems. Relying on the powerful functions of MiniGUI 3.0 in interface special effects, user interface special effects similar to Apple iPhone/iTV can also be achieved.

In terms of browser, this solution includes a full-featured web browser product mDolphin 2.0. mDolphin is a full-featured browser developed based on the WebKit browser core and runs on Linux and MiniGUI. It supports popular W3C standards (HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, XML, CSS 2.1/3.0, XSLT, XPath, DOM and AJAX), supports Netscape JavaScript 1.5, follows the standard Netscape plug-in interface, supports HTTP 1.1, HTTPS, Cookies and proxy servers.

In terms of J2SE implementation, mPeer can use open source Java virtual machines such as Dalvik/Kaffe/JamVM/Cacoo, and provide Java CDC Personal Profile class libraries that comply with Sun's definition. Developers can use mPeer as a plug-in for mDolphin to run Java Applet programs embedded in web pages, or they can run Java applications independently.

Based on Broadcom 7405 SoC, this system architecture can realize the network TV solution. The parameters of this system are as follows: TV display output resolution is 720P, using the hardware acceleration of the chip; the chip frequency is 400MHz; the storage space is 128M NAND Flash; the memory is 256M RAM.