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–Secures DVR Deal with Astro, IPTV Deal with SES Americom
–Launches PC-to-STB Solution, XTend
–Teams with Intel, Viasat on WiMAX TV Demo
–Secures Scandinavian Deployment with Canal Digital

News Corp.-owned interactive TV and conditional access technology provider, NDS, made a number of announcements at the recent IBC show in Amsterdam:

• It said that Asian pay-TV operator, Astro, has selected its MediaHighway DVR solution for deployment in Malaysia. Astro began distributing DVR’s that incorporate MediaHighway in June. The DVR’s offer dual tuners and around 60 hours of recording capacity: in addition to supporting trick-play features and other standard DVR functionality, MediaHighway will allow Astro customers to use their set-tops to access multiple interactive TV applications at once. "Astro has selected NDS after a long benchmarking process in which we analyzed every feature of the short-listed companies’ products, as well as vendors’ capacity to deliver the right product on time," Astro COO, David Butorac, said in a prepared statement. "After an in-depth assessment of all the potential providers, Astro was pleased to renew the fruitful relationship it has developed with NDS’s MediaHighway team and officially select NDS MediaHighway middleware and DVR technologies."
• It launched a solution, called XTend, which it says will enable content stored on the end-user’s PC to be transferred seamlessly to a set-top box over a home network, so that it can be viewed on the TV. The company says that the solution will be offered for integration into set-top boxes that are equipped with IP connectivity. According to NDS, XTend features plug-and-play functionality, allowing the set-top to automatically detect PC’s and Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices; handles all format conversions; and provides a content-filtering option. "XTend is a natural extension to NDS’s offering to TV operators," Yossi Deutsch, NDS’s VP of product marketing, said in a prepared statement. "It allows broadband media users to migrate their viewing from the PC over to the most intuitive and comfortable environment–the TV in the living room. At the same time, XTend increases consumer loyalty to the set-top box as the main consumption point for all digital media within the home network."
• It teamed with Intel and with Scandinavian satellite-TV provider, Viasat, to demo at IBC what the companies claim was the first-ever live pay-TV broadcast over WiMAX. The demo was part of an NDS-Intel pilot program that is exploring the feasibility of delivering TV over WiMAX, as well as the feasibility of WiMAX TV as a business. According to NDS, its WiMAX TV solution will allow operators to deliver content to laptop computers and other portable and handheld devices, and can be bundled with other services, such as data and voice (thus allowing operators to offer a WiMAX triple-play). It provides content protection, support for multiple business models, an EPG and a user interface, the company says. The IBC demo consisted of the following elements: a live TV signal from Viasat arrived over satellite to the NDS booth, where it was encoded in MPEG-4 AVC using a Grass Valley Argos advanced H.264 real-time encoder. It was then delivered over WiMAX (IEEE 802.16-2004 and 802.11) through NDS’s WiMAX TV system to an Intel Centrino Duo-based notebook PC, where, once a TV client was launched, end-users could watch the live feed, browse an EPG, and change channels. The demo also showed content rights and business models (such as pay-per-view) being enforced through NDS’s VideoGuard solution: a VideoGuard Key, connected to the notebook via a USB interface, authenticated the end-user and activated and terminated the service (when the key was removed, WiMAX reception was disabled). NDS and Intel are currently conducting tests of the WiMAX system at Intel’s Wireless Competence Center in Kista, Sweden.
• It said that it had reached an agreement with satellite operator, SES Americom, that will see the latter distributing its NDS Synamedia Metro IPTV middleware solution to the North American telecommunications market (note: SES Americom also recently signed a similar deal with Siemens-owned Myrio). This is the first global distribution agreement for Synamedia Metro, which was released in June. (Note: according to NDS, Synamedia Metro allows IPTV operators to offer games and other interactive TV applications, VOD, and an EPG; these features are available through Synamedia Metro, using NDS’s MediaHighway set-top box middleware application development platform. Synamedia Metro provides content protection through NDS’s VideoGuard conditional access technology.) NDS has an existing agreement in place with SES Americom, under which the latter distributes the company’s original IPTV middleware solution, Synamedia. SES Americom will distribute Synamedia Metro through IP-PRIME, its centralized, satellite-based IPTV distribution service, which allows telcos to offer IPTV without having to build and run an IPTV headend system. "Synamedia Metro is a next-generation IPTV middleware providing reliable, flexible and highly scalable applications which, until now, were not available in IPTV solutions," Nigel Smith, VP of NDS’s Broadband Internet Group, said in a prepared statement. "Based on our experience of more than a decade, building end-to-end open TV solutions which support tens of millions of subscribers, we can bring advanced facilities to the telcos utilizing the exciting medium of broadband IP. By extending this agreement with SES Americom to distribute our Synamedia Metro solution, we can provide these secure, premium TV services to the telcos simply and quickly, offering them a fast, low-cost and effective way to establish a new revenue stream through the IP-PRIME platform."
• It also said that it has integrated Synamedia Metro with a new IP set-top box from Samsung Electronics, the HD-capable DIB-H570N.

In other NDS news: the company announced yesterday that pay-TV provider, Canal Digital, will integrate its MediaHighway middleware into new set-top boxes for a deployment in the Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish markets set to begin next year. According to NDS, Canal Digital plans to take advantage of a number of features offered by the middleware, including DVR, HDTV and MPEG-4 support. At some point in the future, it will use the middleware to support a push-VOD service and other advanced interactive services. The deployment will see MediaHighway integrated with Conax’s conditional access technology. The solution employs DVBS2 on the ST7100 chipset, allowing for rapid and high-quality operation, NDS says. According to the company, due to MediaHighway’s "easy portability," the integration will allow Canal Digital to "benefit from the seamless deployment of NDS’s middleware across different STB hardware and multiple network platforms." "We concluded that NDS had the best offering," Canal Digital CTO, Terje Storhaug, said in a prepared statement. "Their MediaHighway solution suits our needs, providing up-to-date features for our customers and portability across all of our operating countries. We are happy to have NDS on board as a technology provider."

Originally Published: September 27, 2006 in [itvt] Issue 6.96 Part 3

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