The Universal Transport Interface (UTI) standard has been encouraged by the national policy for digital TV industry in China. The UTI standard was jointly proposed by the industrial alliance of dozens of leading players in China’s TV sector led by Tsinghua University in 2002. Thanks to powerful supports from the Ministry of Information Industry, the UTI standard has achieved independent intellectual property for China. Bearing in mind the actual situation in China, the developers fully utilized their advantage as latecomers to crack bottleneck problems in the development of digital TV services in China, and to reflect the latest trend of worldwide technological development.

　　Independent designing and breakthroughs in core UTI technology: China now holds all intellectual property rights for core technologies ranging from UTI protocol to critical UTI ICs, which lays a solid technological foundation for proactive and rapid development of China’s own digital TV industry, circumvents patent traps like those bothering the DVD publishers and DVD player manufacturers in the country, and calls for possible overseas adoption of such protocol and technologies.

　　Innovative USB interface-based UTI technology for digital TV: Unlike decade-old technologies developed abroad, it keeps itself in line with the latest trend of development in serial-to-serial high-speed digital transmission. The developers innovatively adopted the USB 2.0 interface, and built a systematic set of UTI protocols to the uniqueness of digital TV sector in China. They not only enabled CA separation, but also made value-added applications (such as EPG, data broadcasting, and other middleware components) separation from the master units.  

UTI standard cracks three major bottleneck problems within the development of iDTV industry in China:

　　Regional differences. TV operators in China have adopted a huge variety of CA systems, value-added applications and channel standards, which resulted in production of customized set-top box merely in small batches, and zero marketability of unitary digital TV sets. The UTI technology enables flexible combination of CA systems, value-added modules, channel modules and terminal set for higher compatibility and adaptability of the terminal set, as well as mass production and horizontal marketing of unitary digital TV sets.

Time lags. Governed by the Moore's Law, performance-cost ratios of IT products have been quickly improving, with ever-lasting value-added applications. Facing the set-top boxes whose hardware components are neither upgradeable nor expandable, shall we refuse the new applications or make changes? With UTI technology, upgrading and scaling-up will no longer be a problem.

　　User diversity. Different user needs personalization of value-added services in digital TV. Earlier, people have to develop and manufacture various types and models of TV sets and set-top-boxes to cope with the discrepancies between high-performance and low-budget configurations, between multi-functions and low compatibility, or between customization and economy of scale. The introduction of UTI technology put an end to all these problems.

　　The UTI technology is a bridge over barriers for industrial development;
　　The UTI technology is a bridge to adapt current investment to future growth;
　　The UTI technology is a bridge to achieve a perfect link connecting various roles along the industrial chain;
　　The UTI technology is a bridge for a rally of players in DTV and PC industries;
　　The UTI technology is a bridge through to the satisfaction of “God of Users”.
　　The perfect UTI model, a genuine enabler of harmonious future of the entire TV industry!

Smooth Resource Expansion for UTI-based Master Units

　　　　　　


　　UTI technology provides possibility for expansion and personalization in value-added capacity in unitary DTV sets and set-top boxes. The UTI interface enables resource expansion and upgrading in master units such as UTI cards, storage, and signal returning necessary to value-added digital TV services. T-USB, an interface chip for UTI-based master unit, is compatible to USB 2.0 high-speed interface of external standard devices, and can add various USB applications to the master unit. TV operators are allowed to obtain value-added income from user-purchased resource expansions as long as their master unit products have preliminary UTI interfaces.

Typical Expanded Applications:

　　Automatic digital video recording (PVR): PVR function via UTI interface expansion is easily accessible and subject to no limit on storage capacity. Users are able to easily transfer or exchange contents. Such set-top boxes will have higher performance-cost ratio if compared with those with embedded hard drives, because the STB heat dissipation fan can be omitted.

　　Time control: Through expanded local storage capacity or interactive network enabled by UTI interfaces, users may watch their desired contents by playing, stopping, fast forwarding, quick rewinding and pausing at any time they wish to.

　　Two-way signaling: USB-based network (such as Ethernet, WiFi and GPRS) adaptors via UTI interfaces enable interactive programs such as voting, quiz contests, TV shopping, payment settling, on-line gaming, and video phones.

　　MP3 file playing: Users may connect the sound files stored in their USB flash disks and MP3 players directly to sound systems via UTI master units to achieve improved hearing effects.


　　Digital picture browsing and editing: Set-top boxes provide digital picture browsing and editing functions via easy-to-use interfaces, which also avoids complicate operations on the special-purpose devices.

Value-added Effects for UTI–based Operation
A DTV industry model enabled by UTI technology may significantly improve the capacity of TV operators for value-added services:
　　Horizontally, it enriches the types of digital TV terminals, and increases the quantity and quality of digital TV audiences.
　　Vertically, it enlarges the capacities of digital TV terminals for value-added services, and brings up average revenue per unit (ARPU).
　　With UTI technology, basic digital TV services (DTV 1.0) and value-added digital TV services (DTV 2.0) may be rationally segmented and organically integrated to best incorporate resources available in other industries, and to facilitate brisk development.

UTI-enabled value-added services include:
　　External storage expansions: PVR, Push VOD, Broadcasting and storage TV, music downloading, super-large capacity interactive data broadcasting, etc.
　　Two-way signaling expansions: VOD, time-shif television, on-line gaming, TV shopping, TV payment settling, videophone, TV BBS, voting, quiz contests, etc.
　　Enhanced computing expansions: middleware-based interactive advertisement, TV gaming, multimedia playing, etc.