Monotype Imaging Announces Scalable Font Solution for OpenTV Core2 Set-Top Box Middleware

OpenTV to bring Enhanced Text Quality, Scalable Fonts and Multilingual Support to Digital TV

WOBURN, Mass. — Monotype Imaging Inc. (Nasdaq: TYPE), a leading global provider of text imaging solutions, has partnered with OpenTV Corp. (Nasdaq: OPTV) to drive a superior television end-user experience through crisp, aesthetically pleasing fonts. Monotype Imaging’s solution features its iType® Connects™ plug-in font engine optimized for the OpenTV Core2™ middleware solution for digital set-top boxes, and WorldType® Layout Engine, a multilingual text layout technology that supports the complex writing systems of emerging markets such as India and the Middle East. In addition, OpenTV has licensed Monotype Imaging’s Tioga™ typeface family, designed to ensure legibility on a variety of screens.

The OpenTV solution from Monotype Imaging also opens access to its worldwide font collection and enables OpenTV customers to switch from using fixed-in-size bitmap fonts to scalable fonts.

“As the television market transitions from standard-definition to high-definition resolution, end-users expect improved text quality and clarity in their interactive applications,” said John Seguin, executive vice president of Monotype Imaging. “Network operators are also focused on speeding delivery of new offerings to gain a competitive edge, and scalable fonts are becoming paramount to meeting this objective. Through our solution, OpenTV is able to provide its network operators with enhanced text quality, a superior look-and-feel and faster time-to-market, easing entry into emerging markets. We’ve designed our solution to display great-looking text while handling the layout intricacies that certain languages require when interacting with text.”

“The integration of our software with the Monotype Imaging solution allows for a seamless viewing experience, particularly in high definition where quality of graphics and fonts is a critical component,” said Tracy Geist, senior vice president of market development at OpenTV. “This solution, integrated, tested and readily deployable with OpenTV Core2, enables operators and their developer network to create high impact user interfaces and applications that meet any specific language requirements.”

Monotype Imaging’s iType font engine replaces less sophisticated bitmap fonts, which support just one text size in a single font. Multiple bitmap fonts are required to support additional sizes, as well as for individual variants such as italic or bold. Memory resources are further strained when several sets of bitmaps are required to cover a range of sizes in languages such as Traditional Chinese, which contains thousands of characters.

“Bitmaps burden storage resources, hamper creativity and lead to production bottlenecks. In addition, the creation of hand-tuned, non-scalable bitmaps is a time-consuming process,” said Steve Martin, vice president of engineering at Monotype Imaging. “With features such as the ability to apply anti-aliasing techniques to soften jagged edges around curves to further improve display quality, the benefits of our solution go beyond scalability, memory efficiency and multilingual capability. Operators and developers can more easily leverage scalable fonts to enhance and customize content, applications and services, as well as gain user trust through authentic, branded content using type. Scalable, stylistic fonts are becoming an essential design consideration for TVs, especially as consumers demand models with enhanced screen resolution and larger displays.”

Tioga typeface family

Monotype Imaging’s Tioga typeface family is designed to achieve superior clarity on low-resolution displays, even at small text sizes. “Characters such as the ‘b’ and ‘e’ appear open and large to aid readability,” said Allan Haley, director of words and letters at Monotype Imaging. “Clear levels of hierarchy are apparent – stroke changes between the regular and bold weights are obvious, which also aid readability.” The Tioga typeface meets text requirements as outlined by various technology specifications, including those from the DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting Project), MHP (Multimedia Home Platform), DTG (Digital Television Group), MHEG (Multimedia and Hypermedia Information Coding Expert Group), as well as the OpenCable CableLabs specification known as Tru2way™ technology. The Tioga typeface family licensed by OpenTV complies with the WGL4 character set for European language support. Additional language coverage, as well as other typeface designs, may be obtained directly from Monotype Imaging.

iType Connects for OpenTV Core2 Set-Top Box Middleware Monotype Imaging’s iType font engine, based on the OpenType® and TrueType® font formats, allows OEMs and developers to build products that clearly display characters regardless of screen resolution or display size. The OpenTV version is the latest iType Connects solution from Monotype Imaging that enables OEMs and developers of consumer electronics devices to readily integrate scalable, stylistic fonts. iType Connects solutions are also available for Linux®-based platforms, as well as for Microsoft® Windows® Embedded CE 6.0 R2, Symbian OS™ 9.5 and Qualcomm BREW® environments.

WorldType Layout Engine

Monotype Imaging’s WorldType layout engine works with the iType font engine to compose, position and render multilingual text, including complex scripts such as Arabic, Hebrew and Indic. Unlike Latin-based languages where character forms stay constant, characters from complex scripts such as Arabic may take on different shapes depending on adjacent characters. A resulting word may have an appearance unlike the characters used to build the word. Other WorldType Layout Engine capabilities include bidirectional text flow, programmable cursor positioning, paragraph alignment, ligature and accent placement, appropriate line breaking and the ability to wrap text around graphics. Most major languages of the world are supported, including all languages based on Latin- and Cyrillic-based scripts, in addition to Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic, Armenian, Assamese, Farsi (Persian), Greek, Hebrew, Thai, Syriac, Telugu, Urdu, Vietnamese (Latin plus diacritics) and the major written languages of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Africa.

Worldwide fonts for TV

Monotype Imaging offers an extensive range of TV font solutions. Selections include:

• TrueType fonts chosen from Monotype Imaging’s extensive collection of world language fonts
• Fonts that conform to Japan’s ARIB (Association of Radio Industries and Businesses) data coding and transmission specification for digital broadcasting
• Fonts that comply with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s requirements for closed captioning display (EIA-708B specification)
• Stroke-based, small-memory footprint fonts for East Asian text, including fonts based on Monotype Imaging’s patent-pending SmartHint™ technology, which ensures the clear display of East Asian characters regardless of text size
• Monotype Imaging’s Compact Asian Technology for TrueType (CATT™) fonts, featuring stylistic designs that require significantly less memory compared to the same fonts available in the larger sized TrueType format
• Monotype Imaging’s TV font set featuring the 16-font Screen™ typeface family, designed specifically for high legibility on low-resolution screens