Trade Shows

October 8, 2002
IBC 2002: Optimism for push back to prosperity

Special Correspondent

THE NETHERLANDS -- This year's edition of IBC in RAI, Amsterdam promised to provide optimism for a push back to prosperity. In fact, IBC president John Wilson said just before the IBC 2002 rolled off on September 13: "There's a pent-up enthusiasm out there which is looking for something to generate business, which at the moment is extremely flat."

IBC 2002 did not disappoint, given the large number of announcements, product launches, etc. From MPEG-4 broadcast and streaming solutions, digital pay TV solutions, set-top boxes, conditional access, smart cards, video-on-demand services, interactive TV software solutions, to DTH services, MPEG-2 decoders, payment solutions for digital TV and over mobiles, payment solutions secured with PKI/digital signatures, content recognition technologies, system-on-a-chip (SoC) processors for video streaming and image processing applications, interactive TV messaging applications, etc. They were all there!

We are featuring here some of the exhibitors and their announcements that caught the eye!

NDS Group plc
The NDS Group plc, a leading provider of technology solutions for digital pay TV and Kasenna Inc. announced a partnership to integrate NDS's VideoGuard content protection, as part of NDS Synamedia's broadband solution, with Kasenna's MediaBase XMP video-on-demand (VoD) solution. NDS and Kasenna are collaborating to provide secure VoD services across broadband networks.

NDS and Swedish based Kreatel Communications AB announced an agreement that will integrate NDS's VideoGuard content protection software, as part of NDS Synamedia's broadband solution, into Kreatel's IP set-top box (STB). The deal with Kreatel will expand the range of STBs now available to operators who want to deploy secure broadband IP services with the integration of NDS's industry leading content protection solution.

NDS also announced that it has become the world's first company to supply smart cards to 30 million active digital pay-TV subscribers, up from 24.5 million at 30 June 2001. This confirms its position as the world's pre-eminent supplier of secure solutions for consumer access to high-value pay-TV content.

This announcement followed on the highest-ever revenues in any quarter for NDS announced in August 2002 -- £65 million -- and a 20 percent increase over the last quarter of the previous financial year. For the full year, revenues increased 12 percent from £215.6 million to £240.8 million, with conditional access revenues at £41.7 million for the quarter.

Both Sue Taylor, vice president and general manager, Asia Pacific and Diane Powers, director marketing and corporate communications said India is of considerable interest to NDS. The firm will be participating in the forthcoming Convergence India 2003 show in New Delhi.

Canal+ Technologies
Canal+ Technologies, a leading provider of interactive TV software solutions with over 14 million STBs deployed worldwide, launched the first iTV-version of a magazine called "HÖRZU." It is based on the MEDIAHIGHWAY MHP-compliant middleware, in association with EPG experts from GIST Communications.

Hervé Creff, director, product marketing of Interactive Applications, said: "We are delighted to present Germany's leading TV magazine for the first time ever as a fully DVB MHP-compliant application. Our middleware, authoring tools and conditional access system will bring a comprehensive and complete offering to German TV operators." He added that Canal+ is focusing on countries like India as a part of its long-term plans as well -- an observation supported by Oliver Desplat, director, branding and operational marketing and Phillipe Ruggieri, event marketing manager.

C+T recently announced its entry into the Indian conditional access software market and is already in talks with a number of prospective clients for its products -- MEDIAGUARD (conditional access system) and MEDIAHIGHWAY (middleware). C+T has already provided its solutions to Zee TV in India and is to license its conditional access system to Himachal Futuristic Corporation Ltd. (HFCL) to manufacture set-top boxes for direct-to-home (DTH) and digital terrestrial transmission (DTT).

Canal+'s application features TV program listings, TV picks and editorial articles viewers can access while watching a TV channel. Another application, Channel Tuning, lets viewers tune into any current program directly from the application. With GIST TV Trivia, there is more fun and entertainment and users can participate in quizzes about their favorite shows.

As part of Canal+'s new developers' program, MEDIAHIGHWAY Community, GIST also integrated its EPG application on the MEDIAHIGHWAY middleware. All editorial data is directly delivered from the Axel Springer publishing house in Hamburg. GIST's product line includes a VoD guide offering a movie catalog, movie synopsis, categorization, and selection and purchasing functions.

Canal+ and Envivio, a leading provider of end-to-end ISO MPEG-4 broadcast and streaming solutions, also expanded interactive possibilities with MPEG-4 technology. Envivio and Canal+ announced a strategic partnership to develop future MPEG-4 functionality within Canal+'s middleware portfolio. MPEG-4 is the new ISO standard for delivering compelling multimedia and streamed content, such as advanced gaming, and promises to expand the possibilities of the next generation of interactive television entertainment. This prototype of an MPEG-4-based digital TV solution was showcased for the first time at IBC.

Canal+ is the silver sponsor for the forthcoming Convergence India 2003 show.

Conax
Conax AS is working with Visa Norge AS to develop the collection and authorization of payments for products and services delivered via digital TVs, mobile phones and the Internet using the Visa card.
The payment solution for digital TV is based on existing infrastructure using the return channel for TV -- for orders and payments. Conax's conditional access technology is used for securing transactions between the STB and the Conax transaction server.

Payments using mobile phones can be done using Telenor Mobile's PKI/digital ID for buyer authentication and signing of payment transactions. The agreement also includes authorizations of payments via the Internet using the Visa card at Web portals connected to Conax's payment server.

Ole Hansvold, chief technical officer at Conax said: "All digital TV operators and subscribers using the Conax smart card can enter into an agreement to pay for products and services offered via a TV channel using the Visa card. In addition, Conax is already supplying the mobile payment solution used by SmartPay in Norway. The agreement with Visa paves the way for SmartPay to be one of the first payment solutions in the world to use Visa card for payments via mobile phones secured with PKI/digital signatures."

Viaccess
Viaccess and its partner Kinomai developed the eTV Trigger -- a new content recognition technology that enables interactive TV applications to be triggered automatically when pre-learnt images appear on the screen. The solution lets broadcasters and operators synchronize interactive content with TV programs for enhanced TV applications such as games, advertising, information services, and channel switching (instant alert generation) and teleshopping.

K-Detect, the detection engine developed by Kinomai, has a latency period of less than one video frame (40Mbps), achieved through the fast generation of a signature computed live for each frame. According to Mariette Varga, special events manager, Viaccess, K-Detect is connected with the interactive trigger engine developed by Viaccess.

Scientific-Atlanta
IBC marked the integration phase of Scientific-Atlanta and BarcoNet. Nick Fielibert, senior vice president BarcoNet and Scientific-Atlanta's chief technical officer for Europe and Asia said: "We want to reposition Scientific-Atlanta as a European company. We are a new company, taking the best of both worlds."

Scientific-Atlanta launched two MPEG-2 decoders, the Continuum DVP D9020 and D9030 -- each 1U high. The high-end D9030 for primary distribution includes pre-processing and statistical multiplexing capabilities. The D9020 is more cost-effective with fewer features.

Scientific-Atlanta had introduced a VoD solution on IP last year and continued the trend this year at IBC by introducing a single, integrated 3U device. It is called the Mercury multi-QAM modulation unit, an IP gateway for VoD with 800Mbps capacity and 16QAM channels. It displayed the upgraded Explorer-400 DVB-C STBs designed for European markets in digital interactive services. Scientific-Atlanta also has interests in Asia and India. S.K. Sharma is the country head, India for Scientific-Atlanta and Paul Avery is based in Hong Kong.

360 Systems
360 Systems announced important new feature enhancements to its popular Short/cut Editor. Introduced several years ago, Short/cut quickly becomes a mainstay in on-air suites and broadcast production facilities. An intuitive editing tool offering all the advantages of digital technology, in an easy-to-use, portable format, the product's latest evolution, Short/cut 2000, offers lightning fast operation performing all editing operations many times faster than the original recorder/editor. Processing speed for internal functions has been greatly enhanced -- resulting in lightning fast file loading, file saving and mapping of audio clips.

Short/cut 2000 also offers substantially increased recording capacity (by nearly three-fold) -- providing 12 hours of stored audio and records to both internal hard disk and optional external Zip disks. Upgrade kits are available for existing units.

Comverse
TVGate, the interactive TV division of Comverse and the leading provider of iTV communication platforms, showcased its wide range of iTV messaging applications and services. The iTV messaging includes email -- including support of graphic attachments such as picture mail and voice attachments, chat, and instant messaging), kids portal, TV telephony (voice mail, personal call management -- including caller ID, voice email, two-way SMS over TV -- including downloading of icons and ringtones and sending greeting cards, TV-commerce, enhanced advertising, etc.

Equator
Equator Technologies Inc. a leading provider of high-performance, programmable and power-efficient system-on-a-chip (SoC) processors for video streaming and image processing applications, and Media Excel Inc., a provider of sophisticated software compression technologies, announced their relationship to provide Media Excel's SoftStream Software Development Kits for MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 real-time compression technologies on Equator's flagship BSP-15 system-on-a-chip processors. Media Excel's software development toolkits allow manufacturers of video-centric consumer electronic appliances to support standards-based compression technologies and add differentiation based on post-processing or to combine components to produce transcoding or transrating applications.

OpenTV
OpenTV demonstrated its advanced iTV solutions portfolio. Backed by its core middleware offering deployed in over 27 million TV STBs globally, OpenTV enables the interactive TV experience by providing technologies and services that bring to life personal video recording (PVR), VoD services, interactive gaming, and applications like chat, email and t-commerce.

New Skies
New Skies and BT Broadcast Services joined hands to launch a new African DTH TV service for Media Overseas, part of the Vivendi Universal Group. New Skies also announced the entry of its NSS-7 Atlantic Ocean region satellite into commercial service. The satellite built by Lockheed Martin Commercial Space Systems, features nearly 3,500MHz capacity spread over 36 C-band and 36 Ku-band transponders. The capacity can be flexibly assigned to 11 coverage beams.