LAS VEGAS – Microsoft has lined up additional suppliers providing technologies that support the Microsoft TV Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) Edition software platform, which is being deployed by several service providers worldwide.
The announcement, made here at NAB2007, the world’s largest electronic media show, illustrates the accelerating growth of the IPTV industry, the company said in a statement. It also shows Microsoft’s commitment to work with a broad range of solutions providers to ensure ongoing innovation, while allowing service providers the flexibility to choose from a variety of technologies to deploy IPTV services, it said.
The Microsoft TV platform is a family of software solutions that help TV service providers create and deliver new digital TV services for consumers.
Bell Canada has IPTV plans for Quebec and Ontario but has put the launch on hold indefinitely, partly because the company is said to be waiting for further hardening of the Microsoft TV application.
Designed to help cable providers and telecommunications companies derive more value from their digital video and network infrastructure investments, the Microsoft TV family supports a full range of services including interactive program guides, digital video recording, high- definition TV, on-demand programming and Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) services. The Microsoft TV platform works across a full range of set-top boxes and TV devices.
The announcement features new Microsoft IPTV partners or solutions in the following categories:
* Server processors. AMD and Intel Corporation provide leading chipset solutions for server and storage infrastructures for the IPTV Edition ecosystem. Their processors are key to the scalable deployment of live and on-demand TV applications.
* Encoding solutions. Thomson Grass Valley’s standard definition encoders support the MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 standard used in IPTV Edition.
* Set-top boxes. Pirelli Broadband Solutions will provide set-top boxes supporting Microsoft TV IPTV Edition. Pirelli’s portfolio of hybrid decoders brings together IPTV and digital terrestrial TV in one multimedia platform, enabling a wide range of content bundles to be secured through conditional access system standards and digital rights management technologies. Pirelli’s set-top boxes are based on single-chip technology and support legacy and new encoding standards such as H.264 and VC-1 at both standard and high definition. Pirelli set-top boxes can be equipped with hard drives of various storage capacities, providing additional capabilities such as local video recording, recorded-services playback, live TV pause, and time-shift recording.
* Servers and storage. Sun Microsystems Inc.’s Sun Fire x64 servers are the newest carrier-class servers to have been tested against the high-performance IPTV platforms from Microsoft.
“With IPTV deployments now happening in most major regions around the world, the market is entering a new phase,” said Vince Vittore, senior analyst at Yankee Group. “The addition of these new technology companies to Microsoft’s IPTV ecosystem is a clear indicator that the IPTV industry has reached a new level of maturity. Service providers will benefit by having more technology options and the flexibility to deploy a solution that best meets their specific business objectives and the needs of their subscribers.”
“Microsoft’s commitment to the IPTV industry is not only to deliver a comprehensive end-to-end IPTV Edition software platform, but to constantly ensure that industry-leading solutions in all areas can work with our platform to enhance its features and functionalities,” said Joe Seidel, director of the Worldwide Partner Ecosystem for the Microsoft TV Division, in a release. “With the relationships we are announcing today, we add another layer of support for our service provider customers as they continue to deploy IPTV services to consumers worldwide.”
This host of new IPTV ecosystem partners joins a broad group of leading hardware and software providers already working with Microsoft TV to make IPTV a reality.
Microsoft TV IPTV Edition now has deployments under way with nine leading service providers and trials with seven additional providers, representing a footprint across 15 countries on four continents.
