UK set top vendor Amino has cut a major deal, ahead of the IPTV World Forum in London this week, with Chinese IPTV and telecommunications supplier ZTE.
Amino says it will provide its full range of AmiNET set-tops to ZTE, which already has over 20 IPTV deployments globally with one million live customers. Deployments include BSNL in India and PCCW, the top telecom operator in Hong Kong.
ZTE will include Amino’s set tops supporting HD as part of their IPTV solution. However we think it is unlikely that ZTE will only use one set top range, and this is likely to be in parallel with other existing agreements for ZTE.
‘We have been very impressed with the Amino product range which will enhance our IPTV offering,’ said Zheng Wang, Cooperation Director of Multimedia Product Line of ZTE. ‘ZTE’s goal is to be a global communications leader, which means working with other leaders in our space and for IPTV; Amino is a great partner for us.’
Meanwhile Amino has also signed with SmartLabs to offer new interactive services to IPTV providers, adding the ability to search and view Internet-based video content directly from an Amino IP set top.
This system will integrate SmartLabs SmartBRIDGE, onto the Aminio set top range. SmartBRIDGE is an x86-based software gateway for Internet-based video content and Amino has added search controls into its set top software. When a subscriber selects any video they want to watch, SmartBRIDGE gateway requests the video file from the Internet-based video content provider, converts it and streams it to the subscriber’s STB.