Sun Microsystems Inc and Thomson Multimedia SA are working with XAOS Tools Inc to develop authoring tools for the Thomson-Sun Interactive Alliance’s OpenTV interactive television environment. The tools will be specifically designed for use in developing interactive television applications for both broadcast and point- to-point networks and the deal with XAOS Tools is that they should be ready to be released to OpenTV developers next quarter. Based on the i/Speak language and digital content development environment from San Francisco, California-based XAOS Tools, the OpenTV authoring tool is being designed to enable users to manipulate audio, video, graphics and data to create OpenTV-based interactive content. They will support development on Sun workstations and personal computers running Windows NT and Windows95. XAOS Tools’ visual authoring tool will provide high- level authoring, including interactive television application templates for content developers with little or no programming experience. The Thomson-Sun Interactive Alliance was formed in November 1994 to develop end-to-end interactive television systems using Sun’s network management skills and video servers and Thomson’s digital set-top devices (CI No 2,455). The OpenTV operating system is a hardware-independent system for delivering interactive services to homes over existing networks.
