A Methodology for Emulating, Developing, and Testing the Middleware DTV Play in Personal Computers

Traditional environments for developing middleware stacks for DTV Play are often based on personal computers, using their available modules and resources. However, as those do not usually represent correctly the digital TV environment found in commercial platforms, the resulting elements may present restrictions, wrong behavior, and bugs related to incorrectly handled scenarios. The present work addresses this problem and proposes an emulation methodology that includes representations of elements specific to DTV platforms, such as tuners and demultiplexers. An evaluation performed with a real implementation of this scheme showed that it provides software already prepared for final DTV products and shorter development and testing periods periods.