Flex-box: A flexible software architecture for IPTV set-top boxes

IPTV services are available in many flavors. There are two main trends: vertical IPTV platforms on the Internet with user unrestricted access and standard platforms that belong to closed systems (users need to contract the access). The substantial differences and incompatibilities among the different types of platforms have brought the appearance of a plethora of different user technologies and systems that require non-professional users to deal with different devices and hampers the interchange between vendors. This work approaches the problem of dealing with vertical platforms providing a flexible horizontal self-configuring STB architecture.