Espial, developer of TV on-demand software and solutions, has debuted the latest version of its TV browser product for connected TVs and set-top boxes (STBs).

According to the research firm iSuppli Corporation, total flat-panel TV (LCD and plasma) shipments will grow to nearly 243 million units annually in 2013. As more of these TVs require web connectivity, the Espial TV Browser is an ideal platform for connected TVs with excellent graphic performance, unmatched response times and a great web video experience. Features include...

Achieves PC-like performance with fast web page load times and over 100x improvement in JavaScript load times over the previous Espial browser version

Web video ready with built-in Adobe Flash support for popular websites like YouTube and BBC iPlayer including High Definition video

Supports latest interactive TV standards such as Hybrid Broadband TV (HbbTV) and Open IPTV Forum (OIPF)

"10-foot" web-TV experience with remote control navigation, TV-optimized user interface and a virtual keyboard

B based on the powerful WebKit engine used by Google Chrome and Apple Safari browsers. This provides rapid access to new features from the open source community and broad website support

Performance optimizations include memory management, speed boost, stability enhancement and hardware acceleration. SDK is available for branding, JavaScript extensions, user interface customization and seamless porting across chipsets

Delivers a PC-like browsing experience with support for the latest W3C web standards including SVG, CE-HTML (CEA-2014) and HTML5 on which it scores 100% for the popular Acid3 benchmark test. This ensures broad compatibility with web sites

Provides fast time-to-market with reference ports to popular chipsets Intel, Broadcom, Sigma and ST Micro

Espial Browser v5.x for Java-based platforms including Tru2way, Blu-ray, MHP and OCAP also available