NEW DELHI: With the scenario changing to that of a multi-screen era, the need of the hour is to create a single technology that can deliver all systems into the home.

This was the general view of CastleMedia’s Vynsley Fernandes and Rahul Nehra, the founder of Kalpin and national secretary of Society of National Telecommunication Engineers, in a panel on soft solutions for set-top box hardware at the Indian Digital Operators Summit organised by Indiantelevision.com whose founder and CEO Anil Wanvari moderated the discussion.

Fernandes felt that the STBs of today should be like home media gateways that could help operate OTT, tablets or laptops, SD and HD TV, gaming and even radio. The aim was to have master devices that could operate all media.

He regretted that the failure rate of the present STBs which were mostly of Chinese origin was very high – seven to eight million failed every year.

The cable industry had learnt its lesson the hard way whereas the direct-to-home STBs were more porous and met the needs of the DTH industry.

With more options which included complicated technologies like virtual reality, Nehra said, there was need for more sophistication. He said there were no STB manufacturers but the demand for TV remained high, thanks to the cable operators.

But, he said, work had begun in this direction and a pilot project near Hyderabad was almost ready to prepare hardware for the software. He said consumers wanted HD at the rate of SD and so newer technologies had to be found.