London's Olympia exhibition centre will provide the setting in March for the first public appearance of a radical departure in IPTV middleware, with the launch at this year's IPTV World Forum of a new service delivery platform from Zignal, a leading provider of IPTV software solutions and devices.

Unique in concept, revolutionary in design, Zignal combines a wealth of features never before offered by a single IPTV solution. The product of two years' intensive research and development, the system delivers a spectacular range of revenue-generating IPTV services accessible from a variety of standards-compliant digital media receivers (DMRs), such as set-top boxes, remote controls and smart mobile phones.

Services include digital TV, video-on-demand (VoD), personal video recording (PVR), digital radio and on-line gaming. All are accessed through a readily customisable user interface, the design of which is based on extensive usability and behavioural studies and is significantly faster than industry-accepted standards. Zignal operates using a super-fast browser from Norwegian-based Opera Software.

"We believe that the success of IPTV is based on understanding how to build a positive and fulfilling experience for the user, while supporting existing customer relationships and established business practices in service provisioning," says Gudjon Mar Gudjonsson, CEO of Zignal parent, broadband solutions provider and systems integrator Industria.

"Having looked at the needs of the average TV user, we've added a range of other novel features such as a personal profile reflecting individual user interests, a personalised user interface, integrated voting, reminder and messaging system, and a new level of parental control," he adds.

Nerve-centre of the system is the Zignal Enterprise Server, which provides interoperability between any number of subscribers, an intricate IPTV head-end, and a standard management interface that allows for near straight-from-the-box deployment of IPTV services.

Designed to TeleManagement Forum standards for ready connectivity with all leading CRM, OSS, NMS, BSS systems, it can operate using any legacy system in an operator's technology portfolio, without the need for costly and time-consuming replacements, making it ideal for deployment by all Tier One and Tier Two companies.

Zignal and Industria will be appearing at Stand 65 at the IPTV World Forum, which is being staged at the Olympia exhibition centre, London, from March 6 - 8.