The RVU protocol (RVU, a pseudo-acronym pronounced "R-view" ) is an Application Layer

protocol Protocol may refer to: Sociology and politics * Protocol (politics), a formal agreement between nation states * Protocol (diplomacy), the etiquette of diplomacy and affairs of state * Etiquette, a code of personal behavior Science and technolog ...

, that combines the pre-existing Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) standards and a new Remote User Interface (RUI) protocol, which works similar to Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). The RVU RUI protocol is intended to allow an RVU-enabled client, such as a TV, to receive a pixel-accurate display of the

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

available on an RVU server. RVU, combined with DLNA's ability to transmit media (video, photos and music) across a home network, allows for the entire user experience of a media server to be transmitted to an RVU client, makes the user interface available via the RUI protocol while all processing is being done by the server software and plug-ins happen at the host computer; only the user interface is streamed to the client devices. The protocol is primarily intended to operate over a home network. The RVU protocol has been developed with a focus on passing broadcast video coming from a

multichannel video programming distributor Multichannel television in the United States has been available since at least 1948. The United States is served by multichannel television through cable television systems, direct-broadcast satellite providers, and various other wireline video pro ...

through a

residential gateway A residential gateway is a small consumer-grade gateway which bridges network access between connected local area network (LAN) hosts to a wide area network (WAN) (such as the Internet) via a modem, or directly connects to a WAN (as in EttH), wh ...

or dedicated

media server A media server is a computer appliance or an application software that stores digital media (video, audio or images) and makes it available over a network. Media servers range from servers that provide video on demand to smaller personal comput ...

to other consumer electronic devices in the home. However the protocol has much broader applications than just this.

Overview

The RVU Protocol was defined to solve the problem of how to provide a consistent television

throughout the home, without requiring the use of a dedicated set-top box for each television. The RVU Protocol is a communications protocol which runs on a media server device and multiple client devices. RVU uses open standards (including DLNA and UPnP) which are already in use in the consumer electronics field. The clients can consist of various manufacturer-branded TVs,

Blu-ray The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of st ...

players or other client devices. The server generates the user guide and other data and sends this for the client to display. In this way the clients can be low complexity or "thin" client devices, while still providing a full user interface experience to the user. Once an RVU compliant device is connected to an RVU server, the TV viewer can watch the same or different content from any room of the home. Viewers can access the same prerecorded or live content from the server via the client device as if a set-top box were present, with the same user guide experience. RVU supports networking on existing home infrastructure, but is agnostic to the transport mechanism and can work on

wireless Wireless communication (or just wireless, when the context allows) is the transfer of information between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided medium for the transfer. The most ...

technologies such as

802.11 IEEE 802.11 is part of the IEEE 802 set of local area network (LAN) technical standards, and specifies the set of media access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) protocols for implementing wireless local area network (WLAN) computer com ...

or wired technologies such as

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1 ...

or MoCA. RVU supports a Remote User Interface (RUI) that allows user interactions such as trick play (e.g., pause and rewind) and the running of interactive applications. As such, the device can render the interface even though the media center specific software (or the plug-ins) might not be installed there. However, the media files are streamed over a different

. To render the media, the Extender needs to have an implementation of the

codec A codec is a device or computer program that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder on a signal or ...

used to package the media locally installed on the client which works as an extender; having the codec on the host computer is not enough. Alternatively media can be trans-coded on the fly by the host computer to a codec that is supported by the client.

History

The RVU Protocol specification V1.0 was released on 3 December 2009.

Specification

The RVU Protocol specification V1.0 is currently ratified by the board and available to members for implementation. The RVU protocol specification V2.0 became available on January 7, 2013. The specification is in large part dependent on the

DLNA Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA; originally named Digital Home Working Group, DHWG) was founded by a group of PC and consumer electronics companies in June 2003 (with Intel in the lead role) to develop and promote a set of interoperability ...

specification. The specification uses DTCP/IP as "link protection" for copyright-protected commercial content between one device to another.

Certification

RVU certification Devices will be subject to certification by the RVU Alliance. Certification procedures are under development by the RVU Alliance.

References

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External links