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176 177TELE-audiovision International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine — 03-04/2013 — www.TELE-audiovision.com www.TELE-audiovision.com — 03-04/2013 — TELE-audiovision International — 全球发行量最大的数字电视杂志

•Developsreceiverswithcomplexfeatures•InstallationofAppsonalimitedbasis•Androidsystemrequireshigherqualitycomponentsthatresultsinhighercosts•Androidiswell-suitedforprivateusersbutonlylimitedforcablenetworkoperators

Jiuzhou s Android Department Jiuzhou’s company headquarters in

Shenzhen’s High Tech Park. Here you’ll find 15 receiver developers that are working exclusively on the Android operating system.

COMPANY REPORT Android R&D

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178 TELE-audiovision International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine — 03-04/2013 — www.TELE-audiovision.com

Yongjun Zhang is the Android Product Manager. He’s familiar with all the advantages and disadvantages of this operating system.

Will Android become the operating system of the future?

With an enormous R&D department, Jiuzhou has become one of the trailblaz-ers of large receiver manufacturers for satellite, terrestrial TV and cable recep-tion. Quite a few different operating systems can be found in these receivers but there’s one operating system that everyone has been talking about for the past several years: the Android system. Here at TELE-audiovision we also have been expecting that more and more receivers would appear on the market with this operating system, yet that hasn’t really happened. We introduced one of the first boxes, a DVB-T receiver - the DTP2100 from Jiuzhou, back in our 11-12/2012 issue. So, is the expected Android receiver boom now going to get off the ground?

Who better to answer this question than the Android receiver Product Man-ager at Jiuzhou, Yongjun Zhang, who currently is developing Android prod-

In the 11-12/2012 issue we introduced the new Jiuzhou receiver DTP2100, one of the first receivers based on the Android operating system.www.TELE-audiovision.com/12/11/jiuzhou

COMPANY REPORT Android R&D

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180 181TELE-audiovision International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine — 03-04/2013 — www.TELE-audiovision.com www.TELE-audiovision.com — 03-04/2013 — TELE-audiovision International — 全球发行量最大的数字电视杂志

1. In the Jiuzhou lobby: Android Product Manager Yongjun Zhang (left), TELE-audiovision Editor-in-Chief Alexander Wiese (center) and Demi Tao (right) from Jiuzhou's Overseas Marketing.2. A look at the R&D Team that is developing receivers with the Android operating system.3. Brand new: development sample of an Android receiver with WiFi.4. A peek inside this new WiFi Android receiver.

ucts together with 15 engineers. He tells us: “We started developing an An-droid based receiver back in 2011 and this was with 10 engineers.” The first receiver came out in 2012, the one we introduced in the 11-12/2012 issue. “A

considerably better model is just be-ing finalized; it has a 1GHZ chip, 1GB of RAM and uses a Hisilicon chipset.”

This receiver model will be available in different Combo variations - each

unit is IPTV capable and can also re-ceive one of the following standards: DVB-T/T2, DVB-S/S2 or DVB-C. “We’re also preparing something very special: a Dongle that can be plugged in to a TV’s HDMI jack. The Dongle is being de-

veloped based on the Android system.” We love all of these new products be-cause Android is especially well-suited for all of the different functions that IPTV offers.

And it’s here where Android’s weak-ness can be seen. Yongjun Zhang ex-plains, “The system is so open that ca-ble operators are not at all happy about it; their business is based on the sale of additional services.” Thanks to all the available Apps, the additional services

from cable operators will no longer be needed. As a result, in the eyes of ca-ble operators, Android won’t be of any use to them. “Many of the cable opera-tors want to offer their Triple Play ser-vice which includes TV, telephone and Internet”, explains Yongjun Zhang, “but in the case of an Android box, if a user installs one of the free telephone Apps, they will no longer need the telephone service from the cable provider. Even TV channels can be received with a va-

riety of Apps and for the cable operator this would eliminate their number one selling point.” As a customer, a high-speed Internet connection is all that you’d need; you could then install eve-rything else yourself that up until now could have been acquired through the cable company.

Yongjun Zhang puts it all together: “For these providers the Android sys-tem is not convenient since it is such an open system. We need a version of the

operating system that is limited.” As an example he mentions the Digital Rights Management: “If providers can no long-er control the content, they won’t have any desire to implement such a system.”

The question of whether Android will be the operating system of the future can be answered like this: Android re-ceivers are definitely interesting for pri-vate users but for providers, that look to offer high-quality content, there’s no

cable operators if they were to offer lots of elaborate features. And that’s exactly what the Jiuzhou developers are working on: in particular for the lo-cal Chinese market they are developing Android cable receivers with sophisti-cated features and limited capabilities to install Apps. Receivers based on the Android system are ideal for certain ar-eas but this operating system would not take the place of the other operating systems.

advantage for Android receivers. “Aside from that, there are also the high-value Android com-ponents; to be able to use all of these functions you’d need faster CPUs and more memory.” This increases the prices for Android receivers on the order of 10-20% over standard receivers. An-droid receivers would become interesting for