Opera ahead of the crowd on Net TV

Opera Software, which makes the browser, has established a foothold in a technology that some analysts see as an emerging force in the next few years: television delivered over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. The Opera browser will be used in an interactive TV box from Plat'C2, a player in the Japanese IP television industry, Opera said this week.

The deal is part of Opera's ongoing drive to put the browser into all sorts of non-PC devices, including smart phones such as Sony Ericsson's P800. Microsoft's Internet Explorer thoroughly dominates the PC desktop, but so-called embedded devices are seen as more open to competition.

In Plat'C2's Broadband Terminal Box, Opera will act as middleware, presenting all applications and menus in HTML, Java and cascading style sheets (CSS). The small device, about the size and shape of a home smoke detector, is designed to decode MPEG-2 video streams from an asymmetric digital subscriber line or a Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) broadband connection. The browser includes a spatial navigation feature, which allows Web navigation via direction arrows and lets people type e-mails or fill in Web forms via a numeric keypad.

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