Teaching digital TV programming for engineering students: An industry oriented proposal

One of the most important problems of the engineering courses in Brazil is that they do not cover subjects related to computer science deeply enough to attend the needs of the modern industry. It is uncommon to find young electrical engineers able to deal with programming techniques for applications like web engineering, embedded systems, mobile devices, or new digital TV systems. Indeed, that is a new problem for engineering educators, to keep teaching the classical approaches as well as to keep path with new technologies. One of these actual hot topics in Brazil is the programming for Digital TV Systems. The goal is not only to produce basic software but also applications that may be used in new smart TV devices. In fact, we need a novel academic program that could introduce new subjects without changing the official curriculum. This kind of program would help to keep the students aligned with novel themes and help them understand the linkage of fundamental topics with new technological trends. Moreover, this program also helps to bring the industry closer to the university. Complete analyses of the adopted curriculum as well as the activities done are going to be presented in this paper. We will also present some examples of the developed software.