DVB-CI: gateway to truly interactive multimedia environment

The pan-European digital video broadcasting technology is set to become the de facto global standard for digital television. Barely a year after the approval of its specification, several countries including Japan and the USA are already evaluating the DVB standard for endorsement as the preferred standard for the next generation digital television standard. But one of DVB´s main strengths is the option of implementing the required conditional access capability on the common interface (PC card based). Basing DVB conditional access technology on the PC card based common interface not only result in the development of a universal IRD, it will also accelerate the convergence between the PC and consumer application and provide users with a truly multimedia environment. Once digital satellites start providing the high bandwidth channels required for the downloading information from both video and data services providers, users with the DVB-common interface based integrated decoder receivers, will start enjoying the benefits of a truly multimedia environment ranging from online shopping, video-on-demand, on-line buying of books and software, etc