Middleware is a layer of software that lies between the application code and the run-time infrastructure (hardware platform and operational system). A middleware for digital tv applications generally consists of language engines and libraries of functions that enable an easy and fast development of TV applications.

Ginga is the name of the Brazilian Terrestrial Digital TV System (SBTVD) middleware.

Ginga is an almost indefinable, mystical quality of movement and attitude possessed by Brazilians and evident in everything they do. The way they walk, talk, dance and approach everything in their lives.

The ginga (literally: rocking back and forth; to swing) is the fundamental movement in capoeira.

The name Ginga was chosen for the middleware in recognition of the culture, art, and constant fight for freedom and equality of the Brazilian people.

Since its conception, Ginga takes into account two principles: the provisioning of a good support for social/digital inclusion, and the free knowledge sharing.

Ginga takes into account the omnipresence of the TV set in almost all households in Brazil, recognizing that this can be a complementary social inclusion mean. Ginga provides support for what is called "inclusion applications", such as T-government, T-health, and T-learning.

Ginga is an open specification, easy to learn and free of royalties, bringing to everyone the possibility to create interactive contents. It gives a new impulse to the community TVs and to content produced by broadcasters. Its use allows lowering the set-top boxes and other receivers' costs.

The declarative environment of Ginga, named Ginga-NCL, has also a free license source code reference implementation, developed by the TeleMidia Lab at PUC-Rio.

By adopting the GPLv2 license, TeleMidia Lab guarantees the permanent access to every evolution of the code published at the Ginga Community, no matter which applications or authors it will have from now on.

We have different work possibilities in our community. Choose yours:

• Report your experience using Ginga tools;
• Report bugs found when executing Ginga tools;
• Fix detected bugs in the original source code;
• Create new functionalities still absent in the original source code;
• Explore your creative side and develop interactive applications;
• Learn how to use our technologies and be a knowledge multiplier;
• Answer our surveys. This can help us improving the productivity of Ginga Community;
• Publish Ginga information in blogs, newspapers, magazines, etc;
• Create your own work branch!

You can find the tools here. The source code is available at the SVN server of the Brazilian Public Software Portal (needs registering at Ginga Community). By now, the software available are the Composer authoring tool and the Ginga-NCL presentation engine (gingaNclPlayer).

The Brazilian Terrestrial Digital Television Forum has published its Norms as ABNT (The Brazilian Standardization Organization) Norms. The Norms can be download by everyone and are free of charge.

The Norms related with Ginga are part of the set "Terrestrial Digital TV – Data Coding and transmission specification for digital broadcasting". In this set, the following Norms are already available in Portuguese:

• ABNT NBR 15606-1:2007 - Terrestrial Digital TV – Data Coding and transmission specification for digital broadcasting - Part 1: Data Coding
  
  
• ABNT NBR 15606-2:2007 - Terrestrial Digital TV – Data Coding and transmission specification for digital broadcasting - Part 2: Ginga-NCL Ginga-NCL for fixed and mobile receivers: XML application language for application coding
  
  
• ABNT NBR 15606-3:2007 - Terrestrial Digital TV – Data Coding and transmission specification for digital broadcasting - Part 3: Especificação de transmissão de dados
  
  
• ABNT NBR 15606-5:2008 - Terrestrial Digital TV – Data Coding and transmission specification for digital broadcasting - Part 5: Ginga-NCL for portable receivers: XML application language for application coding
  

The other Norms that compose the Brazilian Terrestrial Digital TV System  can be obtained from the ABNT site:
http://www.abnt.org.br/m3.asp?cod_pagina=1249