Unveiling the mystery: Electric Technology's exclusive first look at TVOS1.0

Entering 2014, with the increasing share of smart TV in the TV market, the future development trend of TV is undoubtedly smart TV. As the domestic TV screen controller, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television officially released the smart TV operating system TVOS 1.0 at the end of June this year, and explicitly stipulated that "OTT set-top boxes and other terminals released by cable operators in various regions should install and use TVOS1.0 software, and other operating systems except TVOS shall not be installed."

Although the system has been released for nearly half a year, many media and users still lack basic understanding of it. Below, we will take an exclusive look at TVOS, which is strongly promoted by the radio and television system, to see what the operating system that may "unify the TV world" in the future looks like.

In March 2012, the Science and Technology Department of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television organized 17 domestic research institutes, equipment developers, network operators and other organizations to jointly establish the NGB TVOS Cooperation Development Group to carry out the research and development of NGB TVOS. NGB TVOS, the full name of which is Next Generation Broadcasting Network TVOS, is a Linux-based operating system for network television. It carries applications such as Java and HTML, and its architecture is divided into the application framework layer, execution environment layer, functional component layer, hardware abstraction layer (HAL) and Linux kernel layer. It also strengthens the security of user information by adding information security modules. It is an operating system specifically for TV terminals.

On December 31, 2013, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly established the "Smart TV Standard Joint Working Group" to establish a unified specification and standard system for my country's smart TV set-top boxes, smart TV all-in-ones, smart media gateways, smart TV fusion terminals, Internet TV set-top boxes, etc.

As early as early March this year, before the TVOS system was officially released by the Radio and Television Administration, Jiangsu Cable and Oriental Cable launched a pilot project, with each company undertaking a pilot promotion task of 500,000 sets. As of September this year, Oriental Cable has put at least 30,000 "DVB+OTT" set-top boxes using the Radio and Television Administration's TVOS 1.0 system into commercial operation.

TVOS and Android applications have been able to achieve "compatibility" through technical means. For example, Angry Birds, newspapers and magazines, shopping, ticket booking, games and other applications on Android only need to do some secondary development for the TVOS architecture to achieve a smooth transition. For developers, there is no need to develop from scratch for the TVOS platform.

Judging from the current user experience of Oriental Cable, applications such as advertising and shopping are embedded, and the payment module is basically solved. In addition, the radio and television department has also revealed that it is expected to reach a cooperation with Alibaba on TVOS 2.0 in 2015, and use its best payment function to add a quick payment module to TVOS.

Let’s take the smart digital TV set-top box (produced by Longjing Technology) that is currently in commercial use on Oriental Cable (OCN, a cable and digital TV operator in Shanghai) as an example to explore the true face of TVOS.

"TV" is still the core of TVOS, supporting on-demand functions and clear advertising sections

TVOS has the only built-in app store, which already has many mainstream game apps and supports local media playback.

The TV program guide is basically the same as the experience of ordinary digital TV.

Supports high-definition playback mode and various advertising access methods

“Personal Center” increases user choice autonomy

Built-in message center to push system and personal messages in time

Built-in learning, purchasing, finance and other life applications

The system itself supports program pre-recording and playback functions

It must be emphasized that the TVOS system shown in the above picture was developed by Shanghai Liantong in accordance with the TVOS1.0 standard of the Broadcasting and Television Academy, applied to Longjing Technology's smart digital set-top box, and is now commercially used in the digital TV network of Shanghai Oriental Cable. According to insiders, the TVOS used by Oriental Cable and the "COS Smart TV Operating System" of Shanghai Liantong, which was exposed twice at the CCBN exhibition at the beginning of this year and in March, in other words, the TVOS 1.0 released by the Broadcasting and Television is actually a technical framework and standard, and its system development team is not just one company. As long as it meets the TVOS1.0 standard, it can be called "TVOS".

Although it is still in its infancy, with the participation and support of first-class domestic and foreign smart TV chip manufacturers such as HiSilicon, Broadcom, Mstar, ST, Realtec, and domestic set-top box and TV manufacturers such as Skyworth, Hisense, TCL, Changhong, Jiuzhou, Tongzhou, and Longjing, TVOS 1.0 is going through an evolutionary stage of exploration and experimentation. With the transformation of "watching TV" to "using TV", it is gradually exploring applications including information services, on-demand, playback, games, shopping, etc.

Play games through TVOS set-top box

TVOS set-top box was demonstrated at CCBN in March

Oriental Cable set-top box equipped with TVOS

Wang Xiaojie, Director of the Science and Technology Department of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, once emphasized the importance of independent operating systems in his speech at the DVB+OTT Ecological Construction and Operation Summit Forum. "The research, development, promotion and application of independent smart TV operating systems are of great significance to safeguarding China's cultural security, supporting the digitization, broadcasting and intelligence of China's radio and television, and promoting the healthy development of the smart TV industry."

It can be seen that through the continuous updating and popularization of TVOS, radio and television will also transform from a single media to full media, full function, and full service, and TVOS will also be the foundation and support for achieving all of this. At present, TVOS is required to be used on DVB set-top boxes (i.e. cable digital TV set-top boxes), and "digital cable TV" is the real "son" of radio and television. As a guard who sticks to the ideological gate, radio and television have reason and must require the "son" to maintain a red and pure lineage.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.