Overview of the Hardware

To achieve their purposes, broadcast clients require hardware components of the following sort:

• A digital-ready display. Broadcast clients are intended for home display of television. To achieve this goal requires a progressive-scan super VGA (SVGA) monitor with a resolution of at least 800 x 600 pixels, a refresh rate of 60 or 120 hertz, and phosphors with matching persistence so as to minimize flicker while matching the luminance of television picture tubes.
• A keyboard, pointing device, and remote control. Viewers must be able to control a broadcast client, together with other consumer electronic devices such as a VCR or stereo system, comfortably and conveniently from a seat some distance from the screen. The keyboard, pointer, or remote control device or devices that meet this need should be wireless and designed for easy use on the lap.
• Custom hardware device drivers. Vendors of special-purpose cards to be part of the system need to provide device drivers for their hardware based on the Windows Driver Model (WDM). Drivers for analog video capture and vertical blanking interval (VBI) decoding are WDM drivers.