OTTAWA -- Espial and Toshiba today announced that Toshiba has licensed the Espial Escape browser framework and Espial Espresso graphical user interface components as the preferred solution for the AVM49R Toshiba Reference Platform. This integration will decrease overall time-to-market for international set top box OEMs and telcos. Espial is a leading provider of set-top box and mobile handset software, specializing in applications for IPTV and DTV designs.

"Toshiba's objective with the AVM49R Reference Platform was to simplify and speed development time with 80 percent of the total solution ready for the customer," says Tetsuro Wada, Director of Business Development and Technical Marketing, TX RISC Business Unit from Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. "The ease of customization for Espial software was the deciding factor - now customers can easily brand and differentiate the offering with traditional Web offering tools like HTML. It doesn't get any easier to get to market than this."

Toshiba needed to present customers with a complete IPTV reference platform, including an extensible browser framework, that would meet mass market telco requirements around the globe. Espial Escape met the requirement, with its mature, proven standards support and single code base architecture that also enables easy customization of the applications' look and feel. The combination of Toshiba and Espial provides a solution for their customers within the $100 BOM cost requirement.

Integrated with Escape and Espresso, the Toshiba AVM49R Platform is capable of demonstrating a wide range of IPTV applications, from Menus and Settings, to delivering Video On Demand content, Photoviewing, Portal services and full Web browsing.

The AVM49R complete reference design combines a powerful, highly-integrated 300 megahertz (MHz) Toshiba TMPR4938 MIPS-based(tm) RISC processor with the Vweb VW2010 MPEG-1/2/4 audio/video CODEC chip in a compact 6.7-inch by 6.7-inch mini-ITX form factor. Supporting real-time MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 encoding and decoding, targeted applications include IP set-top box, digital video recorders and personal video recorders, home gateways and multimedia clients.

Toshiba customers demand a flexible solution that allows them to market their STBs and CE devices in multiple geographic areas - from North America to EMEA, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. Espial software can be easily localized, while the Escape architecture provides an input method framework that allows popular input method engines to be used. With recently announced right-to-left rendering capabilities, Espial embedded software is a market segment leader in internationalization, with an in-depth knowledge of the requirements of international STB manufacturers.

"Toshiba has a reputation for achieving the highest standard of technological advancement," says Amanda McKay, Director of Strategic Alliances at Espial. "Our combined offering will enable telcos, internationally, to reduce time to market and customer churn in their IPTV deployments."

Toshiba Corp.

Espial Group Inc.