ZORAN

Background

Our journey with Zoran started in 2009 when they recognized our competence in the Digital TV domain, especially in connected TV services that were in an early stage at the time.

Just a few months after our initial engagement, our implementation of the first DLNA device was certified for Toshiba 40UL605U, announcing the beginning of a fruitful collaboration. Deployment of other interactive applications on ZORAN TV SoC followed with Netflix, Vudu, Yahoo TV, Cinema Now.

RT-RK was a pioneer of Android TV, an expertise that has been nurtured and growing over the last decade and began exactly with ZORAN by porting of Android Froyo on ZORAN TV SoC.

The RT-RK team was initially involved in the implementation of the adaptation layer between the SoC and top-level applications. This included video driver adaptation, A/V flow improvements, integration of the peripherals, etc.

Over the years the team’s skillset grew to be involved in the development of all the software layers of TV sets and Set-Top boxes – becoming an integral part of ZORAN engineering team working on issues 24/7 around the globe from Serbia, Sunnyvale, and Shenzhen.

The team in 2010

Progress in major domains

ZORAN and RT-RK jointly deployed TV models of Toshiba, Sanyo, and SHARP, to name a few.

Toshiba 40ul605u features:

• ATSC for the US market
• MP in 2012
• Based on the Linux OS
• Connected features
  • DLNA certified
  • Netflix®
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Flickr
  • Vudu®
  • Wired/wireless network ability
  • System SW update over the internet

Toshiba 40ul605u

Sanyo DP42861

SHARP LE730

Team growth

The main contact, client, and friend, from back then to the present day

During the cooperation with ZORAN, our major point of contact was Mr. Giora Golan, VP engineering at ZORAN, at the time.

Talking about ZORAN and the cooperation with RT-RK on one occasion, Mr. Golan said: “ZORAN develops SOCs for DVD, Digital Camera & TV. For these SOCs we develop reference designs for companies to build a full system based on our chipsets. At a certain point we in ZORAN realized that as a SoC vendor ZORAN needs to invest more in the software development to support all the different TV applications that were emerging. The RT-RK engineering team has helped us bridge that gap. That team was working with us side by side, on different parts of our SDK, supporting all different use-cases requested by our customers.”

Giora Golan, VP engineering ZORAN, visiting the team in Novi Sad, 2012

Major achievements

Our major takeaways strengths from the cooperation with ZORAN include:

• Prominent level of flexibility and adaptation to ZORAN’s customers’ needs
• Team size scaling per project requests
• Presence of different locations for joint development, on site debugging sessions, certifications, field trials, etc.
• Engaging of engineers with versatile profiles and skills