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June 19, 2007
This weekly e-mail newsletter covers everything related to Telco-IP Television.
Microsoft Cracks Open Mediaroom IPTV Code
Microsoft renamed its IPTV-software platform -- now called Mediaroom -- and with the new version, the software will allow service providers to create their own interactive-TV applications.
Mediaroom, formerly called Microsoft TV IPTV Edition, also adds the ability to let users listen or view to music and photos stored on their PCs on their televisions. Another new feature lets IPTV providers deliver up to 16 picture-in-picture windows on a single screen.
“The platform is really stepping a bit outside traditional TV experiences,” Microsoft TV communications manager Jim Brady said. “We’re showing that we’re committed to this business.”
By dubbing it Mediaroom, Microsoft is also positioning its IPTV technology to become an “ingredient brand” (à la “Intel inside”). Service-provider customers can choose whether or not to co-brand their TV services with the Mediaroom logo, Brady said. The software’s new Multimedia Application Environment provides an HTML-based development environment, with open-application-programming interfaces that will allow third parties to develop applications for Mediaroom.
“It’s been in our plans all along to open up the platform,” Brady said. “We’ve spent the last year-and-a-half fine-tuning the platform. The initial goal was to make sure the basic TV experience was not just me-too service, that it was better than cable and satellite, and now we’re taking the next step.”
The picture-in-picture enhancements of Mediaroom are also supposed to turn service providers’ heads. The MultiView feature could allow a viewer to set up their own multiscreen views -- such as watching several different sports channels at once. A provider, in conjunction with a programmer, could also deliver multiple camera angles using MultiView.
The software allows up to 16 PIPs on a single screen. But, Brady noted, “depending on your TV, that might not be feasible. Six is probably the most people are going to do.” In addition, Mediaroom provides support for digital terrestrial television, allowing service providers to offer over-the-air broadcasts integrated with IPTV services. Brady said this was a specific requirement of BT Group, which launched its Vision service in December, and other customers in Europe had a similar need.
Currently, 10 service providers worldwide are commercially deploying the Microsoft IPTV platform for their digital-TV offerings, including AT&T, BT, Deutsche Telekom, T-Online in France and Switzerland’s Swisscom.
Microsoft plans to demo Mediaroom at the NXTcomm conference this week in Chicago.
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Motorola Unlocks IPTV Set-Tops
Motorola is opening up access to the software in its VIP 1200 IPTV set-top boxes with an application-development platform based on the Linux operating environment. The KreaTV platform is supposed to let operators more easily customize set-top applications, such as interactive programming guides, viewer-voting tools, multiroom digital-video recording, video-on-demand and interactive teleconferencing.
“Openness” is allegedly one of the key advantages of IP-based TV platforms over traditional cable set-tops. For example, Microsoft this week announced that its IPTV software, now called Mediaroom, will be open to third-parties to create interactive TV applications. And the cable industry hitched its wagon to the Cable Television Laboratories-developed OpenCable Application Platform (OCAP) specification to provide this type of customization.
Motorola got into the IPTV business in February 2006 by buying Kreatel Communications, a Swedish developer of IP-based digital set-tops. Since then, it acquired a number of IPTV-technology companies, including MPEG-4 video-compression startup Modulus Video and IPTV-encoding-equipment provider Tut Systems. "Motorola is building on our global IPTV leadership by extending the level of high-quality, on-demand and interactive services for consumers in North America on a proven hardware platform," Motorola corporate vice president and general manager
Doug Means said in a prepared statement.
Motorola said it has shipped more than 1 million IPTV set-tops to date, dating back to when Kreatel shipped its first IP box in May 2001.
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Amino Debuts DVR-Enabled HD IPTV Set-Top
Amino Communications debuted its AmiNET530 digital-video-recorder-enabled HD set-top at NXTcomm 2007 in Chicago.
The vendor said the AmiNET530 supports IPTV, video-on-demand, DVR applications, gaming and HD services to end-user consumers using MPEG-2/4 codecs, and it can act as a hub for services and applications used for playing, recording and streaming video. Amino also announced that SureWest Communications, an independent telecommunications holding company based in Northern California, is deploying its AmiNET130 HD IPTV set-top, which supports High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI).
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DTC to Use Tandberg, Kasenna Gear
DTC Communications, formerly Dekalb Telephone Cooperative, which provides telecommunications, data and cellular services in parts of eight counties in middle Tennessee, will use Tandberg Television’s Mediaplex and iPlex video-processing platforms to deliver standard-definition and HD video.
The company also announced that it selected Kasenna's PortalTV product suite -- including its LivingRoom middleware and MediaBase XMP video-on-demand server -- as the core components of a fully integrated IPTV service to be rolled out to middle Tennessee customers.
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Verizon Rolls FiOS TV Into R.I.
Verizon Communications launched FiOS TV in Rhode Island, taking on incumbent cable provider Cox Communications in a battle for “Little Rhody.”
In the nation’s smallest state by area, the telco is initially making the service available to about 80,000 homes in seven communities. The launch makes the service now available to more than 3 million households in 11 states, according to Verizon.
In Rhode Island, FiOS TV is being offered in Coventry, East Greenwich, Exeter, North Kingstown, Warwick, West Greenwich and West Warwick (what Verizon calls “service area 6”). To date, Verizon said it has deployed more than 7 million feet of fiber in its fiber-to-the-home network in Rhode Island.
Later this year, Verizon plans to offer FiOS TV to another 158,000 households in Rhode Island's service areas 2, 3 and 8, which cover Charlestown, Cranston, Foster, Hopkinton, Johnston, Narragansett, North Providence, Providence, Richmond, Scituate, South Kingstown and Westerly.
The telco also announced franchises for FiOS TV in Newport News, Va., and Old Field, N.Y., and the service’s launch in southwestern Pasco County, Fla. The Newport News franchise covers more than 70,000 households in the city, and the telco will compete with Comcast. Newport News joins 18 other Virginia municipalities on Verizon’s list.
In the Long Island village of Old Field, FiOS TV will take on Cablevision Systems, bringing its total number of New York communities that have approved franchises to 44.
And the more than 10,000 new households in southwestern Pasco County join the more than 66,000 households that already had access to FiOS TV.
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Motorola Licenses Amedia Networks Gateway
Motorola and Amedia Networks announced a licensing agreement based on their jointly developed MIPX home gateway platform.
Under terms of the pact -- which replaces an April 2006 deal between the two companies -- Motorola will assume all engineering, manufacturing and support duties for the family of three IP home gateways and pay Amedia a production fee of $5 per unit, including an advance of $200,000 for the first 40,000 units to be manufactured.
Separately, Motorola committed to paying Amedia an additional $333,333 for a combination of remaining deliverables from the companies’ April 2006 agreement and for specific transition deliverables under the new licensing agreement, of which $250,000 has been received.
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Western Illinois Video Networks Taps ViewNow’s ViewTrak
Western Illinois Video Networks, a statewide consortium of eight rural telephone service providers, will use ViewNow’s ViewTrak usage-tracking software for an IPTV-based video-on-demand service deployment throughout western Illinois.
The parties said the offerings will include content from ViewNow's major motion-picture-studio partners -- Buena Vista/Disney, DreamWorks, Lions Gate Films, NBC Universal, New Line Cinema, Paramount, 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. -- as well as independent studios
WIV member companies serve some 25,000 consumer access lines in rural markets across western Illinois.
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• Bell Aliant will use Widevine Technologies’ forensic-watermarking and digital-copy-protection solutions to protect its Aliant TV broadcast service, joining fellow Canadian Widevine clients SaskTel, Telus and MTS Allstream.
• Huawei Technologies will use Optibase's Media Gateway platforms to provide advanced MPEG-4/H.264 encoding and streaming as part of its IPTV offering.
• Star Telephone Membership Cooperative, which serves more than 20,000 customers covering a 1,458-square-mile operating area in North Carolina, deployed the Verimatrix Video Content Authority System on its IPTV network.
• The Douglas County Public Utility District, based in East Wenatchee, Wash., will use Latens Systems’ FCAS conditional-access-systems solution.
• Symmetricom rolled out its Q-400 IPTV Probe, which monitors up to 400 standard-definition or HD H264 IPTV streams and up to 10,000 voice-over-IP streams in parallel in full passive mode.
• JDSU participated in a white paper published by Alcatel-Lucent, IPTV Test and Measurement Best Practices, which focuses on ensuring quality of experience in live IPTV networks and provides recommendations that can be used as engineering guidelines for making operator-specific business decisions for service assurance.
• Private Media Group content is now available on Canal+ Group's CanalPlay video-on-demand service on Free's Freebox TV IPTV platform in France.
• There were 2.7 million IPTV subscribers in the Asia-Pacific region by the end of 2006, an 87.4% growth rate from 2005, according to IPTV in Asia: Carriers Start the Battle, a new report from Research and Markets.
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