Thomson Sun Interactive LLC has licensed its OpenTV interactive technology to ComStream Corp of San Diego, California and Hyundai Electronics America of San Jose, California. ComStream said that plans to incorporate OpenTV in set-top boxes that will be manufactured by Matsushita Electric (UK) Ltd in Wales and distributed in Europe under Panasonic and other regional brand names. The devices will go to Italy in the first instance and ComStream will also provide set-top boxes running OpenTV to service providers with networks in The Netherlands, Belgium, South Africa, Scandinavia and the Middle East. Hyundai will incorporate OpenTV in set-top boxes it is manufacturing for distribution to the Nethold digital television networks worldwide. First shipments are scheduled for Italy, Benelux, and Scandinavia in this month, where Nethold has launched digital television. Successive shipments will roll out as new territories develop, it said. As part of the licensing agreement, both companies have received the OpenTV Hardware Port Kit used to integrate OpenTV into its decoders. Sun Microsystems Inc and Thomson Multimedia SA restructured the Thomson Sun Interactive Alliance in the summer by spinning it off as a separate company (CI No 2,978). The alliance was originally formed back in November 1994 to develop the OpenTV interactive television software environment. Thomson Sun Interactive is based in Mountain View, California with a European subsidiary in Paris, France. The company has relationships with Xaos Tools Inc for the first authoring tool specifically designed for developing interactive television applications for broadcast and point-to- point networks, and Integrated Systems Inc, which is providing the firm’s users with the pSOS embedded operating system and related tools.
