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–Company was Formerly Known as Pioneer Digital Technologies

Aptiv Digital (note: the company was formerly known as Pioneer Digital Technologies, but was spun off from Pioneer Corp. earlier this year) has unveiled new versions of its Passport Echo DVR EPG and its Passport DCT EPG. According to the company, version 2.7 of the EPG’s offers two new primary applications, dubbed Interactive Video Mosaic and iSubscribe respectively. The Interactive Video Mosaic app allows cable operators to launch custom video venues that present multiple thumbnail video insets on a screen: viewers can hear the audio of each of the channels in the mosaic by highlighting its video thumbnail with their remote. They can also get more information about the channel and program, and, in the case of Passport Echo, record the highlighted show. iSubscribe, meanwhile, is an impulse-subscription application that allows cable operators to create a library of service offers, such as VOD or premium channel packages. According to Aptiv, customers can use their remotes to view descriptions and pricing of the packages, and then purchase them with just a few button presses.

The company has also made a number of other enhancements to Passport Echo. Among other things, it has added several new integrated applications, including Remote Wizard, a step-by-step interactive tool that allows customers to program remote controls for multiple devices; Passport Weather, which offers local and multi-city weather information, with ongoing five-day forecasts from Accuweather; and PassTime Games, which features a package of three solitaire-style card games–traditional Klondike Solitaire, Twenty One or Bust, and 5 Card Stud Poker–in high resolution.

Other improvements to Passport Echo, according to Aptiv, include:

• New sorting features in the EPG. These allow end-users to, for example, watch all of the recorded episodes of a series in one sitting by grouping those episodes together in one folder and then selecting a new "Auto Play" feature: all the episodes will then be played back-to-back.
• A redesigned settings menu that now features high-resolution graphics, with settings organized in expandable folders for improved navigation.
• A screen video inset displaying the current channel.
• Expanded informational and usability features for the EPG’s DVR Saved Shows List: a new "View Disk Info" option displays a summary of DVR disk space usage, including the number of hours of "Estimated Free Space" and the number of hours of "Saved Until Manually Erased" and "Automatically Erased as Needed" content. In addition, the Saved Shows List allows viewers to arrange DVR-recorded programs alphabetically or by erasure date: yet-to-be-viewed shows are displayed with bolded titles, while viewed shows are displayed in standard font, and episodes of a series can be grouped into expandable and collapsible folders. When a grouped folder is selected, pressing the "info" button will display summary information, such as the number of new recordings, as well as play and erase options for episodes in the group, including "Play All," "Play All New," "Erase All," and "Erase All Viewed."
• A new "Upcoming Episodes List" option that can be used when selecting a future program in the EPG. When the option is selected, it will open up the Title/Keyword search page, automatically displaying all the episode titles of the selected program for the week.
• New sorting and filtering functions in the Time View of the guide that allow viewers to sort by channel number (standard view) or call letters. The Time View can also be filtered to display or hide any combination of Favorite Channels, Music Channels, On Demand Channels, PPV Channels, or HDTV Channels.
• Parental control lock by Content Advisory, as well as by rating, channel, time and title. (Note: the Content Advisory system breaks content down into categories and then provides more specific warnings within those categories, so that parents can fine-tune their censorship of content: a parent could, for example, within the "Violence" category choose to block only content marked as "Intense Violence.")
• Automatic Favorites, which sets a channel as a favorite, based on how often it is viewed (viewers can turn off this feature from the settings menu).
• A QuickTips Interface that is automatically displayed to provide viewers with instructions on how to use new features (this feature can also be turned off from the settings menu).
• DAC messaging support, which enables messaging from the headend to all set-tops in the field. (Note: this feature has been part of Passport DCT since version 2.5.)

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