French satellite and DVB-H specialist UDCast said that it now has adapted its iSplicer technology, which manages the difficult trick of changing advertising insertions in different parts of a network, to facilitate localized advertising, from the time sliced DVB-H environment to the real time DVB-T broadcasting system that is now installed in almost 40 countries.
US DRM supplier SecureMedia which was just bought by its biggest US customer, Cavalier Telephone, has teamed with French company Anevia, and integrated its Encryptonite One CA/DRM with Anevia’s Toucan VoD and nPVR server.
Harmonic’s new Rhozet Carbon Coder transcoding software, acquired when it bought the company of the same name a few weeks back, says that it now supports the Adobe Flash streaming media architecture. Carbon Coder accelerates the creation of VP6 formatted video created with the Adobe Flash tool by taking advantage of multiple CPU cores within a single machine as well as multiple machines in a network. The result is a fast platform for creating video content for Adobe Flash Player.
Harmonic also said that PT Indonusa Telemedia, a pay TV service operator in Indonesia, has used Harmonic’s DiviCom Electra 1000 MPEG-2 encoders for its Telkom Vision DTH satellite service. The system also uses the ProStream 1000 stream processing platform with ProCipher scrambling used for both multiplexing and encryption, as well as NMX Digital Service Manager for end-to-end monitoring and control.
In fact it looks like Harmonic saved up a load of orders for IBC, also saying that Wave Entertainment Network, will use Harmonic kit for a satellite video service at sea; that SKY Perfect Communications will use the DiviCom Electra 7000 for a HD service in Japan and that Portugal Telecom has deployed the same DiviCom Electra technology to power its meo IPTV service.
Encoder company Kulabyte added new members to its Express product line, which delivers 2-pass variable bit rate H.264 and On2Technologies VP6 video, which is used in Adobe Flash Media. Kulabyte has also joined the Adobe Flash Media Solutions Partner program.
Norwegian conditional access company Conax said at the show that it would integrate Running Marks watermarking technology licensed from Cinea, a subsidiary of Dolby Laboratories, into its TV security products. Running Marks can mark compressed content at any point within the content distribution network and enables a unique, session-specific identifier or serial number to be placed in every video stream. Conax also said it would integrate rival technology Thomson’s NexGuard watermarking, so customers can have whichever they want.
RGB Networks has signed a reseller agreement with Tandberg Television, now part of the Ericsson Group so that Tandberg can integrate RGB’s Broadcast Network Processor, which provides digital video grooming, statistical multiplexing, transrating and digital program insertion, with its iSIS 8000 IP headend.
Swiss set top maker Advanced Digital Broadcast, said it would launch a new range of set-top boxes for digital terrestrial television operators and OEM partners. The portfolio will consist of a new entry-level, product the i-CAN 2100T, the interactive high definition ADB- 3800/10T and a high definition compatible DVR the ADB-5810TX. It was also showing new DOCSIS data over cable systems which are OpenCable and OCAP middleware compliant and said it had been selected to supply HD, hybrid DVRs to Telef’nica in Spain using the new 5810TWX platform
Israel encoder maker Optibase launched the EZ TV system at IBC, which turns any local area network (LAN) to a digital video delivery network. The EZ TV can be used for military bases, police, corporate IT and government facilities which want to distribute either TV channels or local TV content around a campus. It uses a web-based management system and can manage streams from satellite dishes, terrestrial antennas, cameras, vehicle cameras video tape and different digital formats, such as H.264, MPEG-4, MPEG-2 and MPEG-1
Netherlands cable operator UPC Broadband has bought systems from Motorola (the B-1 video server) and Tandberg Television (OpenStream Digital Services Platform), to power its new VOD services. UPC is hoping to reach 500,000 VoD subscribers this year.
US chip maker Broadcom was definitely making a bid for HD set top business at the show with a deal to tightly integrate three of its chips with OpenTV’s Core2 and the launched of its latest BCM7405 System on a Chip (SoC) built in 65 nanometer technology for broadcast and IPTV set tops, supporting interactive features, codecs for VC-1, WMV9, H.263, H.264, MPEG-4, DIVX and DRM systems from Microsoft, NDS’ Secure Video Processor and Intertrust’s Marlin.
Digital Fountain was showing its new ToughStream server built with high availability technology from Milan based Neptuny on standard Linux servers. This is a bid for IPTV VoD business with a very low packet loss, based on the Digital Foundation Raptor Forward Error Correction technology. In particular HD streams are very susceptible to visual artifacts unless supported by extra FEC services.
Netherlands based CA DRM company Irdeto announced that Ukrainian satellite operator Poverkhnost has opted to use its smart card based Digital TV content protection to secure the country’s first direct-to-home (DTH) network. The Poverkhnost service has exclusive sports in both SD and HD, with distribution rights in ice hockey, boxing, and football and will distribute 50 standard and 2 or 3 HD channels from a Tandberg headend to Thomson, Humax or Topfield set tops.
Irdeto also said it had an exclusive agreement with Neotion TNT France for conditional access solution for its new digital terrestrial television DVB-T pay TV service in France.
Irdeto also said it had teamed with set top maker Amino and French VoD server maker Anevia, to offer joint IPTV system so that existing DVB services can also deliver via IP networks. This announcement is aimed at cable and MMDS operators using DVB-C technology or Satellite operators with DVB-S technology that want to deliver a multicast over broadband. The system will be deployed in Russia by Kosmos TV and by Stargate TV (DVB-S).
French encoder technologist Ateme came out at the show with its own brand of encoders, whereas previously its technology has been used by existing encoder markers. It also announced that leading French television broadcaster M6 (Paris) has standardized its IPTV encoding platform around the Ateme Kyrion H.264 system offering 9 SD channels and its HD channel directly through ADSL.
Thomson announced it has been chosen by leading Russian Pay-TV Operator, NTV-Plus, for the rollout of a new High Definition (HD) TV set-top box which will support Russia’s first HD definition TV service which was launched in June this year. It hopes to capture between 10,000 and 20,000 HD subscribers by the end of this year.
Microsoft announced a new early adopter customer and an expanded partner ecosystem for Microsoft Interactive Media Manager (IMM) the broadcast and edit workflow system. Italian broadcaster RAI has joined the technology adoption program for IMM, which will enable RAI to manage the media work flow process as it digitizes assets for viewing over the web. Microsoft has also added relationships with FileCatalyst, Marquis Broadcast, Rhozet and TeleStream to integrate their products into IMM. RAI will use IMM to digitize assets from tape and MXF files and output onto a storage area network.
Coding Technologies said at IBC that its aacPlus audio codec has been selected by the Brazilian Digital TV Forum for Brazil’s digital terrestrial ISDB-T platform to be officially launched on December 2nd, 2007.
Conditional Access supplier Nagravision has integrated its Nagra Mobile conditional access system with the Alcatel-Lucent Mobile Interactive TV platform which supports DVB-H and DVB-SH and is one of the building blocks of Alcatel-Lucent ‘Unlimited Mobile TV
Home Box Office (HBO) said at IBC it will implement a comprehensive Thomson Shield watermarking system to protect its pre-released screener content against piracy. The new deal follows a recent purchase by HBO of Grass Valley HD equipment including K2 Media servers, Trinix routers, and LDK 8000 WorldCam HD cameras from Thomson as part of HBO’s complete migration to HD production and playout.