ABSTRACT
The size of investments required for setting up and running digital television transmissions as well as the bewildering increase in transmission rights of attractive 'contents' are such that the vast majority of digital TV programmes are not free-to-air in countries where they have a significant penetration. The middleware can be functionally compared to a high-level operating system with graphical user interface such as Windows, which is very different from a low level real time operating system, on which the middleware is based. One of the crucial functions of most middlewares is to make the application independent of the hardware platform on which it is run, assuming it has sufficient resources. Mainly due to the strict interdependence between Betanova and the d-box, both have found themselves limited to the German market, on which their monopoly and lack of openness have been bitterly criticized by their competitors.
