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NEWS:
Multimedia opts
for Verimatrix
security solution
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VERIMATRIX
has announced that Win Multimedia, Thailand’s leading
IPTV operator and multimedia service provider company,
has selected Verimatrix to protect its digital television
channels and video-on-demand service of WinTV. Verimatrix’s
Video Content Authority System (VCAS) for IPTV provides
end-to-end security for content delivered to more than
500,000 WinTV subscribers. “Win Multimedia’s
WinTV is an excellent example of how Asia’s IPTV
operators are bringing different types of services and
delivery networks together in order to create compelling
new pay-TV services,” said Steve Oetegenn, chief
sales and marketing officer at Verimatrix. “The
role of content protection has evolved beyond a single
layer of protection that is locked to the distribution
network into a flexible, 3-dimensional approach that
adapts to and enables new business models.” WinTV
includes 60 channels of digital television programming
in a unique ‘catch-up’ format, movies and
trailers on demand, as well as special interactive services
such as karaoke, music vote, games, e-learning and shopping,
which are offered on set-top-boxes and secure PC screens.
Jintavee Sawadisevee, Win Multimedia’s chief information
officer, said: “Win Multimedia’s success is
grounded in our ability to give our subscribers the
content they want, when they want it, including sports
coverage and on demand movies. We can only do this if
the content owners trust Win Multimedia’s ability
to protect their premium content all through our distribution
chain. Verimatrix provides us with the capability to
secure WinTV content at every stage, including across
our wireless distribution networks. VCAS for IPTV also
integrates well with our partners and component vendors,
which is an important consideration for protecting our
investments.”
www.verimatrix.com
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Contact
BPL
Business Media Ltd
3rd Floor
Armstrong House
38 Market Square
Uxbridge
Middlesex
UB8 1LH
+44 (0) 1895 454411
sales@ibeweb.com
www.ibeweb.com
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MESSAGE
FROM THE EDITOR...
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 WELCOME
to the third edition of ‘IPTV in Focus’... IBE’s
electronic newsletter covering developments in the global
IPTV arena. This issue has, at its core, four main features:
1) An interview
with Charlie Horrell, CEO of Packet Vision, in which
I ask him about his medium and long-term growth predictions
for the global IPTV market. 2) An opinion
piece by Tom Ohanian, chief strategy officer at Signiant,
looking at the challenges and opportunities in fulfilling
the IPTV digital supply chain. 3) A second opinion
piece by Bo Ferm, director of product management for
Verimatrix, looking at the need to stay competitive in
a crowded pay-TV market. 4) A technical
piece by Colin Farquhar, CEO of Exterity, looking
at the potential benefits of replacing conventional TV
distribution systems with LAN technology.
Interest
in the IPTV proposition continues to grow, and figures
predicting future user numbers and, more importantly,
revenue continue to escalate. You can’t read anything
about IPTV these days without ARPU cropping up somewhere.
For those of you not familiar with the term, which was
devised by the telecoms industry, it stands for Average
Revenue Per User – ie, what can we charge people
(or what will they pay) for what we are about to offer?
The IPTV Zone at this year’s IBC continues to expand,
further reflecting the weight of interest behind this
technology. Make sure that you allow sufficient time during
your trip to IBC 2008 (12-16 September 2008, Amsterdam
RAI) to visit the IPTV Zone and bring yourself right up
to speed with this emerging broadcast technology.
The
technology itself continues to roll-out at different rates
in different markets, but the prediction is that, irrespective
of pace, all markets will ultimately arrive in the same
place. The uptake of the technology has been rapid in
Spain and France for instance, but has been, to date,
a little more pedestrian in the UK. Charlie Horrell, CEO
at Packet Vision, says in his interview: “Looking
at the bigger picture, the important point is that all
delivery platforms are adopting IP management layers.
Cable is upgrading to Switched Digital Video, which makes
it very similar to IPTV in terms of delivering a more
personalised service. Even satellite is moving towards
using the Ethernet connection in the set-top box to further
improve its offer to viewers. We’re heading towards
a near future where IP will govern most TV delivery. From
Packet Vision’s perspective, even in territories
where the future outlook for IPTV is relatively modest,
such as the UK, the technology provides a useful learning
ground for broadcasters and advertisers to prepare for
opportunities that will be widely available very soon.”
So
the future is bright, and the key to the future will be
on show within the IPTV Zone at IBC 2008 – don’t
miss it. IPTV in Focus remains your regular insight into
the fast-moving world of IPTV development and deployment.
Enjoy the read!
Neil Nixon,
Editor of IBE and IPTV in Focus
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LEMON
WAY LEADS IPTV BANKING |
 LEMON
Way – software provider of innovative multi-channel
solutions for banking and finance – has announced
the launch of its Wonderbank IPTV solution for bank account
and transaction management using a television. A key link
in the mobile business chain, Wonderbank IPTV is positioned
as one of the only applications on the market to cover
an extended spectrum of multi-channel banking functions.
With Wonderbank IPTV, users can check the balance of one
or more accounts at any time (before making an investment,
for example), block a card, manage accounts and carry
out transactions, view stock exchange prices in the form
of intraday graphs or access Bollinger Band analyses –
all while watching the Olympics from Beijing or any other
television programmes.
"The
Wonderbank IPTV solution enables banks to offer their
customers a unique financial service. Its user-friendly
multimedia environment is based on a reliable, secure
infrastructure which offers the ideal platform for the
kind of decisive application involved in this context,"
said Sébastien Burlet, Lemon Way's CEO. "Wonderbank
IPTV provides the security essential for money transfers
from one account to another. Banking information appears
on the screen clearly, simply, reliably and quickly."
www.lemonway.fr
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FRAME-ACCURATE
SPLICING
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PACKET
Vision and Tandberg Television have partnered to deliver
an advanced targeted advertising solution. The companies
have built what they believe to be the world’s only
solution capable of delivering truly frame-accurate splicing
in H.264 over IPTV, which is a key component in ensuring
seamless delivery of addressable advertising. The solution
was used to provide addressable advertising to university
students subscribed to Inuk’s Freewire Service -
an IPTV network that provides triple play services to
universities across the UK. Ads played out during Channel
4 commercial breaks that weren’t relevant to students
were replaced with ads for a major UK convenience food
brand during May. It was the second such campaign to be
completed successfully.
 Both
campaigns were achieved using Packet Vision’s addressable
advertising service, and employed Packet Vision’s
PV1000 and Tandberg’s EN8030 encoder. The PV1000
is Packet Vision’s fully integrated appliance with
ad server, splicer and router. Powered by the Video Switching
Engine, the PV1000 is architected to provide optimum addressability
and unparalleled video quality to the network edge. The
Tandberg EN8030 encoder is based on the company’s
award-winning MPEG-4 AVC compression platform and provides
a feature-rich solution to delver the best quality pictures
at the lowest bitrates. A frame accurate splice was defined
as a splice occurring with an error margin of no more
than 2 frames. Packet Vision and Tandberg Television believe
that the next-best available solution would have an error
margin of at least 6 frames or _ second, which is clearly
visible to the human eye.
Accurate
splicing is an essential element of ad insertion or replacement,
and therefore a basic but critical component of addressable
advertising. Without such accuracy ad spots can either
cut into the spots that follow them, or run short - leaving
holes in the commercial break when an ad is inserted,
or showing the original ad when that ad is replaced.
Packet Vision provided Tandberg Television with a sophisticated
analysis of Channel 4’s programming feed and with
the tools required to fine-tune the legacy Tandberg E5720
MPEG-2 encoder and the new EN8030 MPEG-4 AVC encoder -
making them the only encoders currently available that
can enable such frame-accurate splicing. The solution
developed through collaboration between Packet Vision
and Tandberg Television adheres to SCTE35 and SCTE104
standards.
Patrick
Christian, CTO and founder of Packet Vision, said: “It’s
easy to forget that standards within television are about
ensuring the quality of viewer experience. If IPTV is
going to meet those standards - and it has to - then collaboration
is critical for all members of the ecosystem. Working
closely together, Packet Vision and Tandberg Television
have developed the first solution for frame-accurate IPTV
ad replacement - a significant step towards achieving
true targeted addressable advertising.”
Roger
Bolton, EVP of compression systems at Tandberg Television,
said: “The opportunity to deliver targeted advertising
is highly attractive to our customers as it opens up new
revenue generating channels to drive the next generation
of personalised television. Packet Vision has earned high
regard in the industry for its innovative advertising
solutions and we are pleased to be working with the Packet
Vision team to deliver the technologies that enable our
customers to introduce new advertising models today.”
www.tandbergtv.com
www.packetvision.com |
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VIMPELCOM IN MICROSOFT LINK |
 VIMPELCOM-Communications
(VimpelCom) and Microsoft Corp. have announced a strategic
partnership to deliver new connected TV experiences to
consumers in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent
States (CIS) through Corbina TV, which will be powered
by the award-winning Microsoft Mediaroom Internet Protocol
TV (IPTV) and multimedia software platform. Corbina TV
will be operated by Corbina Telecom, a subsidiary of VimpelCom.
The agreement was officially concluded by Jean-Pierre
Vandromme, executive vice-president of Network Resources
Management of VimpelCom and CEO of Golden Telecom, and
Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft, in
a meeting on Friday 23 May in Moscow. Corbina TV will
be the first Microsoft Mediaroom IPTV service in Russia
and the CIS.
Based
on the Microsoft Mediaroom software platform, Corbina
TV will deliver connected and personalised TV services
for consumers in Russia and the CIS, with advanced features,
such as video on demand (VOD), digital video recording
(DVR), instant channel changing, and fast search to quickly
and easily look up shows using keywords. Corbina TV will
be delivered as part of a triple-play package to Corbina
Telecom subscribers through purchase of a Motorola set-top
box, where consumers can chose between one with 160 GB
hard disk or one without a hard drive.
Subscribers
will be able to watch live or on-demand TV in standard
definition as well as high definition and enjoy a connected
entertainment experience. The service is planned to launch
mid-2008. “I believe that this agreement will further
strengthen our long-term partnership with Microsoft, providing
our company with a distinctive competitive advantage in
one of the most promising high- growth broadband markets
in the world,” said Alexander Izosimov, CEO of VimpelCom.
"Corbina TV is poised to deliver a truly compelling,
connected TV experience to its customers in Russia and
the Commonwealth of Independent States,” said Ballmer.
“For nearly 70 years, watching TV has meant adjusting
your life to someone else’s broadcast schedule. With
Microsoft Mediaroom, Corbina TV will give consumers complete
control of what they watch and when they watch it.”
At
launch the service will include more than 100 channels
and provide access to over 1000 films, cartoons and series
available on demand. Dmitry Malov, vice-president of Corbina
Telecom, said: “Corbina Telecom’s fibre-optical
network is reaching almost every apartment building in
Moscow and many other Russian cities and is known for
its speed and reliability, providing its users outstanding
Internet service. With the Microsoft Mediaroom solution,
Corbina Telecom will also provide its users an outstanding
TV service.”
Microsoft
Mediaroom was selected to provide the service as it delivers
an end-to-end IPTV platform. Microsoft Mediaroom enables
managed delivery of Corbina TV including support for new
features, content provision and platform development,
establishing a strong foundation for the future of the
service.
www.microsoftmediaroom.com
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leading e-zine for the IPTV industry 
