A state of the art media box

Abstract: Today media centers are often cluttered with multiple devices each controlled by their own remote control. It is often hard and/or painful to manage and utilize these devices, especially for inexperienced users. Simstream wants to build an innovative smart-TV that as much as possible centralizes functions and controls.  Operating the system should be intuitive and simple, yet experienced users should have access to more advanced operations. This requires acquiring several inputs as well as integrating the communication devices that are necessary to control the attached external devices. Whenever possible, we want to efficiently process every input while minimizing latencies.  As a result, we want all the frequent operation to be as quick and lightweight as possible in order to provide a high quality user experience even under high system loads. This project takes advantage of the widespread availability of touchscreen mobile devices in order to provide an innovative means of control over the television, with remote control mobile applications running on an user’s familiar device. A remote controller will also be sold together with the television, and this remote controller will also have a touchscreen, and will propose the same capabilities as the remote control mobile applications. Finally, this platform will be open to third-party applications, and as a result this thesis project developed a software development kit which is designed to be easy and familiar enough for developers to adopt it and create applications with it. Applications will be developed together with an interface displayed on the remote controllers, in order to tailor the remote control interface to what is currently displayed on the television screen