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September 3^rd, 2009

digiGO! — The Digital (R)Evolution™

Cisco has announced TV 2 Norway has selected a Cisco® MPEG encoding and Internet Protocol (IP) video system platform for its new HD-DTT play-out facility in Bergen, Norway. Cisco's turn-key, end-to-end solution includes MPEG-4 HD and SD encoding, Cisco Digital Content Manager (DCM) statistical multiplexing and network management systems. It was designed, installed and commissioned within eight weeks of the contract being awarded in order to meet TV 2 Norway's HD service launch date. TV 2 Norway is, with viewing figures of 30 percent, the largest commercial television station in Norway. TV 2 started transmission in 1992 after the Norwegian government established the concession for commercial TV transmission. Today TV 2 also operates TV 2 Nyhetskanalen, TV 2 Zebra, TV 2 Filmkanalen and TV 2 Sport. The end-to-end solution includes the Cisco SD encoder Model D9034, HD encoder Model D9054, Cisco Digital Content Manager (DCM) Model D9900 with IP statistical multiplexing functionality. In addition, the platform includes the Cisco ROSA® Network Management System, which has been specially developed to allow TV 2 Norway to quickly assign more bandwidth to the HD signal when required to suit operational conditions.

Entone, Inc., a provider of IPTV home connectivity solutions, and Edgeware, a provider of server systems for network deployed on-demand TV, have announced that Entone’s IP video gateways and media hubs are fully integrated with Edgeware’s widely-deployed, video-on-demand (VOD) servers. This collaborative effort provides service operators a more efficient and cost-effective IPTV solution that can be quickly and easily deployed to enable advanced services, such as time-shifted TV, VOD, whole-home digital video recorder (DVR), and online media services, using advanced codecs such as MPEG-4 (H.264/AVC). Entone’s Connected Home Solutions integrate patent-pending media routing technologies that enable the delivery of live broadcast television and recorded video services throughout a subscriber’s home without requiring new wiring or a STB at each TV set, resulting in dramatic cost savings in capital and operating costs for the operator. This development allows service operators to seamlessly upscale their on-demand service as their subscriber base grows. With ultra efficient Edgeware servers delivering 20 Gbps from 1U, operators can scale from powerful centralized configurations to distributed edge deployments, for best total economy. The servers consume just 85W of power, 1U rack space and require virtually no maintenance. Operational costs are dramatically reduced enabling caching of premium content at the edge and avoiding expensive core network and backhaul upgrades for Web TV deployment.

JMR Electronics, Inc., who developed the BlueStor™ PeSAN™family of high performance PCIe-attached storage systems, now delivers seamless integration with AJA Video Systems. Using JMR's EXTN-8 PCI Express Extender RAID storage systems, Final Cut Pro users have a high-performance, versatile platform for SD, HD, and 2K editing without exhausting the Mac Pro's available, high bandwidth, PCI Express slots. The JMR EXTN-8 features a single x8 PCIe connection to a (JMR supplied) host I-O card installed in the Mac, and expands that to five usable PCIe slots in the RAID storage subsystem shelf, currently available up to 32 TB capacity, but expandable to several hundred TB using standard SATA-2 disk drives. Repeated performance benchmarking for the EXTN-8 verify HD frame transfer rates of over 1.2 GB/s using common SATA-2 disk drives and dual internal hardware RAID controllers. The product's internal PCIe expansion backplane is compatible with standard PCIe cards of up to 16 lanes connectivity. JMR provides the host I-O card which occupies a single PCIe slot in the server or work station.

Nagravision, a Kudelski Group (SWX:KUD) company and an independent provider of value-added content protection solutions, announced last Friday that its NAGRA Media ACCESS conditional access (CA) system was selected to secure the TDT Premium pay TV digital terrestrial television (DTT) horizontal platform operated by Spain's leading audiovisual network operator, Abertis Telecom. NAGRA Media ACCESS is being integrated into TDT Premium homologated STBs and conditional access modules (CAMs) to support the new platform. The certified DTT set-top boxes and CAM modules will be compliant with the technical specifications for DTT CA enabled receivers agreed within Spanish Digital TV Forum by the main industry stakeholders to create an open platform for all broadcasters. The STBs and CAMs will be sold to consumers via retail channels as well as through TV installers. The first STBs and CAMs integrated with NAGRA Media ACCESS will be available in retail shelves by the beginning of September.

NDS, a provider of technology solutions for digital pay-TV, has announced it has teamed up with ACCESS Systems Europe Holdings B.V., — a subsidiary of ACCESS CO., LTD., a global provider of software technologies for the mobile and beyond-PC markets — to bring Pay-TV and free-to-air (FTA) channels to connected TVs without need of a STB. The two companies will integrate the NDS InfiniteTV™ hybrid content platform with ACCESS’ NetFront™ Browser, to provide pay-TV and FTA broadcasters with a compelling solution for connected-TV users. InfiniteTV allows consumers to view traditional linear channels, catch-up TV, and on-demand content through a single, intuitive user interface. Consumers do not need to install any software or any additional hardware. More than one million connected TVs in Japan already run ACCESS’ NetFront Browser, which will be pre-installed on connected TVs from a number of manufacturers; these are expected to be available in Europe and the US in 2010.

T-VIPS has announced the IBC launch of the T-VIPS DVB-T2 Gateway, which integrates with existing DVB-T headends and DVB-T2 modulators to enable terrestrial operators to take advantage of the 30 to 50 percent increase in bandwidth efficiency enabled by migration to DVB-T2. The DVB-T2 Gateway, the latest member of T-VIPS’ award winning cProcessor product range, is the only hardware solution required to convert a DVB-T headend for full DVB-T2 compliance. Situated in the headend after the multiplexer, the T-VIPS DVB-T2 Gateway protects an operators' investment in existing DVB-T infrastructure and allows broadcasters to take advantage of the increased bandwidth offered by DVB-T2 to launch new services such as HD and VOD. This solution also enables an operator to choose to have DVB-T and DVB-T2 services co-exist side-by-side in a network, an option likely to be very attractive for a number of operators.

Tripleplay services, innovators with the IPTV, Digital Signage and VoD Software space, will be exhibiting at IBC 2009 in Amsterdam and will be showing new versions of their Digital Signage solution — the User Portals and IP television platform — all to be unveiled at the show and demo'd at Tripleplay’s stand, IP411, located in the IPTV zone. “We will be launching the latest version of our digital signage solution, TripleSign 5.5, which will provide a richer feature set, a higher number of end points, and seamless integration with its IP television product,” said Steve Rickless, CEO for Tripleplay Services. “A new version of Tripleplay’s Hotel and Education Portals will also be available for demonstration,” he added. “The Hotel Portal now supports icon based interface with enhanced hotel specific features, while the Education Portal incorporates flash streaming to remote clients, as well as video bookmarking and content management. Tripleplay will also be demo'ing its latest release of its IP television platform with full HD TV support, remote picture capture, and enhanced management features.”