IPTV Industry Prepares to Deliver Microsoft TV-Enabled Set-Tops
and Consumer Devices to the Home
- Sep 9, 2005 02:30 AM (PR Newswire)
Hardware Partners Confirm Support With New Set-Top Boxes and
System-on-Chip Offerings
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, Sept. 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Today at
IBC2005, the International Broadcasters Convention, in a milestone for
the industry's move toward Internet Protocol television (IPTV)
readiness, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) announced further partner
support for its IPTV software platform with a host of new set-top-box
offerings and a new class of system-on-chip (SOC) that will enable the
production of low-cost, high-definition (HD) set-top boxes. The
announcements underline a growing choice of Microsoft(R) TV IPTV
Edition-enabled devices, allowing broadband service providers
worldwide to develop offerings best suited to their business models
and customer needs.
Hardware partners Linksys-KiSS, Motorola Inc., Scientific-Atlanta
Inc., Tatung Co. and Thomson confirmed support for the Microsoft TV
platform with a range of new set-top boxes supporting Microsoft TV
IPTV Edition:
-- Linksys-KiSS announced it will provide set-top-box products
supporting Microsoft TV IPTV Edition with integrated DVB-T
tuners and conditional access support for European Network
operators. Products will be available in December 2005.
-- Motorola will support Microsoft TV IPTV Edition in the
company's worldwide portfolio of IP-based video products,
including its VIP line of IPTV set-tops, a forthcoming line of
hybrid IPTV-DTT set-tops and advanced video-encoding
technology.
-- Scientific-Atlanta announced its support for Microsoft TV IPTV
Edition in a new family of set-top boxes under development.
Scientific-Atlanta will target both the NTSC market with its
IPN series set-top family and the PAL and European markets
with its IPP series set-tops. Models will range from basic
SD to HD and DVR and will include optional features such as
integrated IP over Coax and DVB-T support. These set-top
models, which complement Scientific-Atlanta's encoder support
for IPTV Edition, will be on display at IBC2005 Stand 1.471.
-- Tatung announced its support for Microsoft TV IPTV Edition in
a new set-top box. The company will demonstrate this support
in the Sigma Designs booth, Hall 3 West, No. 151.
-- Thomson and Intel Corporation
announced that a new family of IPM11xx set-top boxes supporting
Microsoft TV IPTV Edition is now commercially available and
shipping to Microsoft TV customers. The IPM11xx products
support a range of video codecs including MPEG-2, Windows
Media(R) Video 9 (Microsoft's implementation of VC-1, the
proposed SMPTE standard) and MPEG-4 AVC. They feature the Intel
1.4 GHz Intel 854 platform with its application-handling
performance, design flexibility and scalability. They also come
with optional hard disk drives for both streaming and digital
video recording (DVR) applications. On display in Thomson Stand
11.551, the IPM11xx products are the first deployable set-top
boxes to support the IPTV Edition software.
- http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=51671783
Monty Solomon (monty@roscom.com)