Acrodyne Industries is embedding Linux in their newest HDTV transmittors.
What's the best looking Linux
you've ever seen? Well, if you're among the shrinking number
of people who haven't been stunned by HDTV, you may have already
seen it.
Acrodyne Industries,
the television transmitter division of Sinclair Broadcasting, has a history of industry
firsts, and the latest is embedding Linux in their newest transmitters.
Andrew Domonkos, principal systems software engineer with AI, says:
We are the first in our industry to introduce a
television transmitter system using Linux as its operating
system. Our-top-of-the-line HDTV transmitter series, the Quantum,
uses an industrial PC running Red Hat Linux in a network server
configuration. We chose Linux for both its reliability as well as its
networking potential. Running anything else would be unacceptable; when
a TV broadcaster goes off the air due to a system controller problem,
the loss in revenue can be tremendous.
A paper by Acrodyne's Marc Polovick explains:
Linux (which is internet synonymous) is a UNIX-based OS and
provided a valued starting point to this requirement. It was the intent
of the Quantum designers to use UNIX as it was designed to be used,
in a distributed processing "server/client" environment, a
real-time/object-oriented data driven system architecture. A user-friendly
GUI is provided and is displayed through one large LCD display device. This
intuitive graphics-based interface has been designed to be mimicked and
to provide secure "remote anywhere" monitoring capabilities
that are network accessible in almost every network environment.
Quantum's User-Friendly GUI
At the receiving end, Linux has become a common operating system
in set-top boxes as well. In fact, National Semiconductor created
Linux4.TV, "Where open-source Linux meets interactive
television"--for engineers working on products that use the
company's Geode SC1200 integrated processor and SP1SC10 development
platform.
More proof that Linux just keeps looking better.
Doc Searls in senior editor of Linux Journal.
