About RVU
The RVU AllianceTM will make available technical specifications for the secure distribution of premium content in a digital home network. The technical specifications, which draw heavily on industry standards, provide for discovery of multiple source and client devices, secure delivery of content, and a comprehensive Remote User Interface (RUI) protocol including pass-through of remote control commands and trick play modes. RVU devices may be standalone set-top boxes or a module inside a product such as a TV, game console or DVD player.
The RVU technology offers benefits to content service providers, consumer electronics manufacturers and customers that are unmatched by other technologies. It uses content protection already widely embraced by content providers and cleared for use by service providers in content distribution agreements. RVU leverages widely implemented UPnP and DLNA technologies. RVU makes only minimum additions to meet specific service provider needs (for example, a pixel accurate RUI that is rendered identically over all display devices in the video home network.)
Scope of RVU Technical Specifications
Device and Service Discovery and Control:
Determination of the presence of networked devices, identification of their capabilities and status, and configuration and control of their state and operation.
Media Management, Distribution, and Control:
Exchange of media information control from server networked devices to enable organization, browsing, searching, and selection of media items to be processed, and control of media streaming sessions by networked client devices.
Of particular importance is a low-overhead remote bitmap remote user interface (RUI) to enable communication between a media server and one or more clients, including remote control commands and status from client devices to the server. This sub-protocol allows clients to offer a complete user interface with a common look-and-feel, without requiring extensive custom UI software on the clients.
Content Streaming and Media Format Interoperability:
Streaming of a set of interoperable audio, video and image media formats from a server to client devices.
Digital Content Protection:
The RVU specification requires DTCP over IP content protection.
Manageability and Supportability:
Protocols allowing networked devices to be managed and supported, e.g. allowing secure field upgrades to device software.