Irdeto has put out a suite of products called SmartStart which can be used for conditional access, set top middleware and a customer care and billing system, all rolled into one.
The move marks a change to the company’s approach, signaled when IBS Interprit was moved to Irdeto control from is sister company Entriq, along its recent acquisition of IDway, the set top software vendor.
At the time of the IDway deal we speculated that this was matching measure for measure the market change reflected by OpenTV being acquired by rival Nagravision.
SmartStart clearly goes a step further, offering a discounted, pre-integrated bundle of products for getting started in digital TV applications, perhaps readying itself for a spate of contracts across Europe, Central Europe and Asia Pacific focused on taking free to air DVB-T systems into Pay TV.
Irdeto says it created the SmartStart package as an end-to-end product for cable, satellite or terrestrial operators in emerging markets and it allows new operators to get up and running quickly. Post-integration support is also centralized, providing a single point of contact for all technical support and service issues.
Additional modules from partners Brand-ID and TeleIDEA allow for functions such as pre-paid vouchers and an advanced EPG to also be added.
“The recent acquisition of IDway and the transfer of the IBS Interprit business to Irdeto allow us to offer an attractive integrated pay TV solution to the market,” said Graham Kill, Irdeto CEO “SmartStart allows operators to establish a digital TV platform quickly and easily, with security, billing and interactive capabilities that will serve them long into the future.”