NDS Post-CES News:

--Unveils Distributed-DVR, P2P Video Sharing for Synamedia Metro
--Signs Deal to Power New Interactive TV Service in Turkey
--New Subsidiary, Jungo, Teams with Ikanos on RG Reference Platform

News Corp.-owned interactive TV and conditional access technology provider, NDS, which issued a slew of announcements during CES in Las Vegas earlier this month (see separate article in this issue), has also generated a fair amount of news since then:

• The company has unveiled two enhancements--dubbed Distributed-DVR and ShareTV respectively--to its Synamedia Metro IPTV middleware solution. It says that patents are pending for the enhancements, which leverage residential gateway software from Jungo, the company that NDS acquired earlier this month for $107.5 million in cash. According to the company, the Distributed-DVR feature uses the home network and Jungo's residential gateway UPnP software to find suitable external hard disks for DVR storage, thus removing the need for a traditional DVR (i.e. a set-top box containing a hard disk). Without the need for a dedicated hard drive, NDS says, the cost of the IP set-top box is reduced, and the residential gateway becomes the home's "virtual on-demand TV server." The end-user, therefore, is not restricted by the amount of storage provided in the set- top box, and can add as much storage to the home network as he or she needs in order to store recorded programming. The new ShareTV feature, meanwhile, allows IPTV subscribers, who have used Distributed-DVR to store recorded programs within their home network, to share their stored content using peer-to-peer technology running in the Jungo residential gateway software. The feature would, for example, make it possible for a subscriber who had missed an episode of a TV series, to request and receive that episode from other subscribers: ShareTV would manage the download of the episode from other peers on the operator's network and would then store it on a selected hard disk for playback. According to NDS, its flagship VideoGuard content protection technology works with both ShareTV and Distributed-DVR to protect the rights of content owners: as the media files are encrypted, content is protected even if transferred to a portable media player, NDS says, and a subscriber can only access and view content for which he or she has a valid subscription. "Distributed DVR and ShareTV are powerful NDS innovations allowing IPTV operators to introduce TV recording and sharing of archived TV content at a fraction of the cost of providing a typical network DVR system using VOD servers and large amounts of dedicated bandwidth," Nigel Smith, VP of the NDS Broadband Internet Group, said in a prepared statement. "This is the first of a range of collaborations with Jungo where we see the set-top working hand in hand with the residential gateway to offer a wide range of flexible and cost-effective solutions to the consumer, while safeguarding the operators' and content owners' rights." Added Jungo CEO, Ofer Vilenski: "The power of the residential gateway software is that it provides an always-on control point for the home network, UPnP, peer-to-peer technology and a virtual on-demand TV server to distribute the video content to viewing devices in the digital home."
• The company has signed a deal with Dogan TV, a subsidiary of Turkish media group, Dogan Yayin Holding, that will see the latter deploying a broad range of its content protection and interactive TV technologies and applications. Dogan TV will use the technologies to launch an interactive TV service, called D-SMART, that will be available to around 17 million Turkish households. According to NDS, the service will provide both free-to-air and premium content--making the latter available on a pay-as-you-go basis. NDS will provide Dogan TV with its VideoGuard conditional access technology, its MediaHighway middleware, and an EPG. The agreement also calls for NDS to provide Dogan TV with its Value@TV interactive infrastructure and applications and its MediaHighway Development Kit, which will enable Dogan TV to offer interactive TV games, interactive advertising, and other ITV services. "We are delighted to be working with Dogan Yayin Holding, the leading media group in Turkey, in this exciting television market," NDS chairman and CEO, Abe Peled, said in a prepared statement. "DYH has long been an innovator, and the new Dogan TV platform, D-SMART, certainly reinforces the group's position at the forefront of the media landscape. We believe that this co-operation between two industry leaders will change the way people are entertained and informed in Turkey."
• Its newly acquired subsidiary, Jungo, has teamed with chipset developer, Ikanos Communications, on a residential gateway reference platform that is designed to enable triple-play offerings from broadband service providers. According to the companies, the new VDSL2 residential gateway platform is backward-compatible with ADSL2/2+ and VDSL1, and merges Jungo's OpenRG gateway software with Ikanos's Fusiv processor. It delivers 100Mbps symmetrical throughput, utilizing the underlying Fusiv architecture with the FX100100S-5 chipset (support is also available for the Fx10050S-5 chipset), and, the companies say, supports a range of applications, including VDSL2, ADSL2+, IPTV, home media distribution, home networking, VoIP, Wireless LAN, Ethernet switching, data routing, NAT, firewall and TR-069 remote management support.
• It says that Korean incumbent telco, KT, and the C-Cube consortium (note: the latter is comprised of 54 companies, including KT, SK Telecom, Hanaro Telecom, LG Dacom, Onse Telecom, KBS, MBC, and Samsung Electronics) have successfully completed an IPTV trial, using NDS content protection solutions. The IPTV trial was concluded on December 31st, and a final technical evaluation will now be submitted to the Korean Ministry of Information and Communications and the Korean Broadcasting Commission, which, according to NDS, are conducting rigorous technical verification and stability testing of the C-Cube consortium's IPTV service. The information gathered by the trial will be used to review legislation that will authorize the launch of commercial IPTV services in Korea. "After extensive evaluation, KT decided to work with NDS because the company offers the most secure and robust IPTV solution," KT vice president, Young-Hyun Kim, said in a prepared statement. "The IPTV service included a broad range of digital and interactive applications. The NDS systems supported the variety of services that our consortium wanted to offer, and NDS engineers in Seoul helped us achieve our goals to broadcast the best possible service in a very short period of time." The IPTV platform that was trialed (note: the trial covered 270 households in Seoul and Yangyeong County) offered a range of services, including 27 interactive TV apps that delivered stock market, weather and sports information and other content; VOD; HDTV; multimedia messaging; a user-generated content portal; and the ability to view digital photos. NDS implemented an optimized version of its Synamedia solution for the trial, and also developed a Korean-language EPG.

Originally Published: January 31, 2007 in [itvt] Issue 7.16 Part 2

Click: http://www.itvt.com to subscribe to our free email newsletter, which contains all the news stories you see on this Web site, and additional breaking news and scoops, in-depth features, interviews, screenshots, videos, and other exclusive content you will not find anywhere else.

[itvt]'s

Registration is now open:

http://www.thetvoftomorrowshow.com

March 13-14, 2007

San Francisco, CA