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–Deploys OpenStream VOD Platform with Get Norway

Tandberg Television–the company which over the past two years or so has purchased VOD infrastructure provider, N2 Broadband, interactive TV technology and services provider, GoldPocket Interactive, IPTV content delivery company, SkyStream Networks, and Internet video company, Zetools; and which was itself subsequently acquired by Ericsson–has launched a network PVR solution dubbed Xport Time-Shifted TV (TSTV). According to the company, the solution enables operators to significantly expand the number of broadcast channels they can offer as part of a delayed viewing experience (including “restart” functionality, where consumers can watch a recording of the earlier part of a program while that program is still being broadcast), and has been designed to manage multiple content receive/record sites simultaneously through a single interface. It also claims that the solution is highly scalable, and offers centralized management of recording rights, broadcast capture with “live TV” redundancy, and an open architecture that lets operators choose their video server vendors. “Tandberg Television has considerable experience in delivering time-shift TV products to market, with ‘re-start’ and ‘delay-TV’ deployments worldwide,” Andrew Rowe, the company’s VP of software product management, said in a prepared statement. “Drawing on this experience, and our understanding of what operators need in order to support more delayed-TV choice and consumption, we are introducing the next-generation time-shifted TV solution. By providing centralized management of recording rights and open interfaces that do not lock operators into specific video servers, our new solutions enable operators to capture and maintain new viewers without the requirement of expensive replication of hardware or expansive use of operational resources.”

According to Tandberg, Xport TSTV works with the company’s OpenStream Digital Services Platform, and can also be integrated into any other backoffice environment to enable delay-TV functionality through the use of industry-standard interfaces. The company bills the new product as providing three important functions: rights management, recording management and viewing management. It says it allows operators to situate rights management in a single location or use a distributed model to provide local management of recording schedules and real-time capture of broadcast streams. In either case, Tandberg says, the system blends business rules and metadata to determine which programs can be recorded and where, and when they can be made available for time-shifted viewing. Thus, for example, Xport TSTV will understand that a specific live sports program can be recorded in all markets covered by the network, but–in the local market where the sports event covered by the program is held–can only be played back two hours after the event starts. The system also manages content rights restrictions, such as “no fast-forward allowed,” Tandberg says, and, where appropriate, can provide real-time updates to programmed recordings when events run over their allotted time across the footprint. Other important features of Xport TSTV, according to Tandberg, are that it manages the physical capture of broadcast content in cooperation with operators’ VOD systems, and that it offers open architecture and interfaces that allow operators to select the capture devices of their choice. “Time-shift television services, especially re-start and network PVR offerings, are very resource-intensive in terms of their management, and often require that the entire technical architecture for capturing, preparing and streaming video is replicated at every recording site,” Ken Durand, Tandberg’s senior director of software product management, said in a prepared statement. “Operators have found it challenging to scale these systems and our cost-effective next-generation time-shifted TV solution is designed to overcome this problem.”

In other Tandberg Television news: The company says that its OpenStream Digital Services Platform and EQ8096 EdgeQAM solutions have been selected by Norwegian triple-play provider, Get Norway, for a network upgrade that includes the launch of VOD service. “Our ultimate objective is to provide our customers with a breadth of advanced services that will keep them entertained both now and in the future,” Christophe Brod, Get’s broadcast networks manager, said in a prepared statement. “On-demand is a key feature of this as it provides the interactive, personalized, time-shifted television consumers increasingly want. Tandberg Television’s unrivalled technical offering combined with its deep market expertise enable us to smoothly upgrade our infrastructure and provide next-generation on-demand and digital TV services.” Other European operators that have deployed OpenStream to date (note: the product is widely deployed in North America) include UPC Netherlands and Multimedia Polska.