North Americans soon will be able to purchase and view Asian-originated TV programs and movies—previously only available in VHS tapes or DVD—within days, not months, of broadcast or release. GlobeVISION, a content aggregator and service provider specializing in offering content to North American Asian subscribers, and thePlatform, a leading provider of digital audio and video publishing solutions, announced that GlobeVISION chose thePlatform Media Publishing System (MPS) to deliver personalized television and movie programming to GlobeVISION's subscribers.

GlobeVISION will conduct a trial of the IPTV service beginning in November 2005, and intends to make it commercially available for North American Asian populations during the second quarter of 2006. The service will give customers access to on-demand subscriptions and premium pay-per-view content, including high-definition movies. Specially designed set-top boxes provided by Korea-based I-Cube will enable users to purchase and store content for viewing at a convenient time on their televisions.

"GlobeVISION has chosen thePlatform Media Publishing System to aggregate, manage and publish its IPTV video-on-demand service offering," said Edward Bach, CEO of GlobeVISION. "Our service will bring timely and culturally relevant content to consumers' living rooms, using MPS as the foundation."

"We've proven the strength and flexibility of thePlatform MPS for PC broadband and mobile publishing, and we're now extending that reach to TV delivery," said Ian Blaine, co-founder and CEO of thePlatform. "Innovative companies like GlobeVISION are recognizing the tremendous opportunity of delivering content over IP-based networks. Our job is to help them bridge the technical complexities that stand in the way of making money from digital content delivery."

With thePlatform MPS, GlobeVISION can efficiently aggregate Asian-originated video-on-demand content from many different providers and deliver it to customers via broadband in multiple formats and bitrates. In addition to aggregating content, MPS makes it simple for GlobeVISION to associate rich metadata with content, enabling customers to easily discover and receive personalized media based on their selected preferences.

MPS will enable GlobeVISION to streamline the entire video broadband publishing process including:

• Content Ingest and Management: GlobeVISION will be able to easily aggregate and incorporate content into MPS from content providers. MPS can import content metadata from media files or add additional metadata to media objects that can store multiple media files in different formats and bit rates.
• Content Policy and Business Rules: GlobeVISION can set usage rules on its video content via MPS's built-in support for Windows Media Digital Rights Management 10 (WM DRM). MPS will enable GlobeVISION to set categories and control the policies regarding how content can be experienced by its subscribers.
• Publishing: MPS will automatically publish content in the correct formats, in the correct size and bit rate. GlobeVISION will deliver its content in a variety of formats for TV playback, including Windows Media Video 9/VC-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4.
• Reporting: Using MPS's built-in reporting capability, GlobeVISION will receive detailed reports on the quality of end-user experiences, including which content is most popular. This data will enable GlobeVISION to test new content genres and programming, and to constantly refine its service offerings.
• Integration with Business Systems: Through the MPS Software Development Kit (MPS-SDK), MPS can integrate with notification services and GlobeVISION's internal and third-party billing, credit card processing, and authentication systems. Via a powerful set of Web-services based interfaces, MPS can automate and customize all aspects of the media publishing process, facilitating integration through existing customer and third party system components.