Exterity and Cilutions announced a partnership that will make Cilution’s signage applications available on Exterity’s range of receivers. The partnership will enable Exterity customers to easily include comprehensive digital signage into their existing IPTV solutions. The integrated offering will be demonstrated for the first time at Infocomm in Las Vegas from 13th – 15th June on Exterity’s booth: N1755.

Cilution’s software offers users a feature rich, fully configurable digital signage solution that can be used for everything from meeting room signs and menu board displays in restaurants, to advertising and security messaging in airports and public venues. These features can now be easily integrated with Exterity’s range of receivers by simply plugging a flash drive loaded with the Cilutions software into the receiver’s USB port. No other equipment apart from the Exterity head-end solution is needed, meaning it can be deployed easily, takes up very little space and requires almost no maintenance.

Minerva Networks reveals a complete pay television solution deployable over broadband networks. Built on Minerva iTVFusion 5, the new Broadband TV service combines the advanced linear and on-demand video content consumers desire over a service provider's data network. Additionally, Minerva and its network of industry partners launched a fully functional BBTV Reference Platform and Solutions Guide that will serve as a framework for operators to investigate, model and assess business opportunities available through Minerva BBTV.

The reference platform and solutions guide provide a unique working model, and detail best practices and optimal business strategies for operators who are looking to expand their service offerings with the new BBTV solution. Whether an IPTV operator wants to extend its reach to new customers beyond the current network bandwidth limitation, or a broadband service provider is interested in offering a new high margin, easy to deploy pay TV service, the guide addresses the business rationale and alternative market positioning. Together, the platform and guide reduce risk and reveal insights into successful BBTV initiatives.

Verimatrix announces that Telefonica del Sur has selected the Verimatrix Video Content Authority 3 solution to secure its IPTV service. Telsur selected VCAS for IPTV as a replacement for its existing conditional access system in order to achieve higher performance, scalability and a wider choice of ecosystem partners. As the global number one in IPTV content protection, VCAS enables the secure delivery of linear TV broadcast and on-demand video services, and offers a solid upgrade platform that Telsur can use to cost-effectively enhance its competitive advantage.

VCAS for IPTV is integrated with Minerva's iTVManager, which provides a comprehensive middleware and service delivery platform for management of compelling video services over broadband networks, including high-definition, pay-per-view, video-on-demand, and digital video recording. The integrated solution is installed on set-top boxes made by Wistron NeWeb Corporation, Amino, a leading IPTV STB manufacturer, and Xavi, developer of the first hybrid IPTV/DVB-C STBs in Latin America.

The first hotel interactive IPTV system based on the NetUP IPTV Combine 4x Hotel with Android IP set-top boxes has been successfully deployed in Hotel Dubrovnik situated in the centre of the Croatian capital Zagreb.

NetUP IPTV Combine 4x installed in hotel allows guests to access TV and Video on Demand content using user-friendly and feature-rich GUI of Android-based IP set-top boxes. The IPTV solution is connected with MICROS Opera hotel property management system which enables the following features:

• welcome message on guest check-in
• hotel info page
• auto posting IPTV services to the PMS
• hotel bill view- messages from reception
• room status change via TV (dirty/clean) for the housekeeping service

Exterity was selected to equip Spiegel’s new production facility in Hamburg with their market leading IP-based TV and video distribution technology. Installed by German specialist Perfect Media Solutions, the IPTV solution supplies a combination of 47 SD and HD TV channels simultaneously to 600 members of staff throughout the new facility. All of this was achieve by PMS in less than 1 week.

The channels distributed are a mixture of live broadcast TV captured using an Exterity DVB-S2 TVgateway (taking channels from Astra and Hotbird) and in-house TV channels using HD-SDI encoders from the SpiegleTV playout/post-production centres and via WAN from outside broadcast studios. All the channels can be view at staff computers using AvediaPlayer Desktop or on screens attached to the 160 AvediaPlayer receivers situated throughout the building.

Octoshape announces a strategic partnership with leading software development company Craftwork, which specializes in solutions for the Digital TV industry.

Over-the-top consumer offerings are rapidly evolving in the industry, bringing with them a host of challenges. Video quality, network capacity, profitable business models, and time to market concerns are each issues the industry faces everyday. Producing TV quality living room experiences on high-resolution devices is a clear milestone to reach in the industry.

AMX announces the immediate availability of its advanced Vision2 IPTV system (version 7.2). The innovative video solution includes several new capabilities that enable companies and universities to develop or upgrade video communications initiatives.

IP video has become a core communication tool, but for casual users, operating recording and management software can be complex. The new release of Vision2 features a control API that allows digital video to easily be integrated into an AMX control system for user-friendly management with capabilities such as one-touch recording and archiving. And, addressing the increased use of mobile devices, AMX has added a new user interface that allows Vision2 content to be viewed on-the-go.

MobiTV announces it is introducing a TV Everywhere solution for cable, satellite and IPTV service providers, leveraging the company's expertise in providing video delivery solutions for mobile devices, personal computers and other Internet-enabled consumer electronics. Based on MobiTV's existing cloud-based video distribution platform, TV service providers can now offer their subscribers live and on-demand programming for viewing inside and outside the home on personal computers, tablets and a broad range of mobile devices.

The MobiTV TV Everywhere solution is easily adaptable for seamless integration with existing TV infrastructure and back-end systems. Customers looking to extend their content to other platforms may leverage MobiTV's existing ingestion and encoding efforts. As an end-to-end managed service that leverages MobiTV's cloud-based video distribution platform, the TV Everywhere solution can help TV service providers reduce time to market and costs associated with deployment and operations. Additionally, the service will be supported 24x7 by the experienced team in the MobiTV network operations center.

Three leading technology companies announce they have created a solution that allows service providers to quickly and cost-effectively deploy a complete multiscreen TV Everywhere service, including streaming live video. The solution includes:

• itaas, the system integrator and provider of an interactive client app for viewing content;
• RGB Networks, the leading provider of scalable multiscreen IP video delivery solutions;
• Verimatrix, a specialist in securing and enhancing revenue for multiscreen digital TV services.

With over 120 million Internet connected mobile devices deployed, demand for TV Everywhere is growing. Service providers of all sizes face the challenge of offering a multiscreen service quickly or risk losing viewers to fast-moving competitors. Together, these three technology leaders provide a way to deploy a reliable solution for video streaming that dramatically reduces the time, effort and cost to launch multiscreen services.

Fresh from the Cannes Film Festival in the South of France, Exterity is attending InfoComm 2011. Taking place from 15th-17th June at the Orange Country Convention Center in Orlando, Florida, Exterity will showcase its leading IPTV technology, demonstrating how IP based video distribution technology was used to upgrade content delivery at the Cannes Film Festival, the second most media-covered event in the world, just after the Olympic Games.

Early this year, organizers of the festival decided to make fundamental changes to the way daily content from the event was being distributed to attending broadcast media by switching to IPTV technology from Exterity. While previously content in Cannes could only be seen on three large screens at the heart of the Palais des Festivals, Exterity’s solution distributed between 20 and 25 videos every day via IP to each journalist. Video streams were available on demand to workstations with additional distribution to central TV screens using AvediaPlayer receivers specially provided for the purpose.

Mariner announces they are teaming with Border States Electric to jointly market xVu, Mariner’s award winning service quality monitoring solution. The strategic partnership will expand xVu’s market penetration throughout the United States and provide BSE with an industry leading monitoring solution product.

TR-069 provides a standard for remote management of end-user devices. By leveraging this technical standard, xVu is able to proactively monitor the performance of IPTV set top boxes incorporating TR-069.

Imago Group has announced a new initiative for the IPTV market sector. Breeze Technologies, the MPEG and IPTV solutions developer, represented exclusively by Imago in Europe, has formed a new partnership with French IPTV middleware provider, Vianeos, which will allow the two companies to deliver an ‘IPTV in a box' solution.

The agreement was finalised at last month's IPTV World Forum in London and brings together Breeze Technologies' TVIUM DVB-T set-top box, which captures and distributes digital TV and radio across the IP network, with Vianeos's Octopus middleware solution that allows customers to manage all the multimedia content distributed across their IPTV network.

Exterity will be showcasing the latest additions to its range of TV and video over IP products at NAB 2011, the world’s largest digital media and entertainment event. The show is taking place from 11th-14th April at the Las Vegas Convention Centre.

Throughout the show Exterity will be demonstrating its extensive range of industry-leading Building IPTV solutions available to the market, including a preview of the soon to be launched AvediaServer version 3.4., which includes:

• Support for hardware RAID
• Improved performance and easier maintenance
• Multi language support
• AvediaPlayer Desktop application

Digital Rapids announces new dual-channel models in the StreamZ and StreamZHD families of studio encoding systems; StreamZHD Live ABR adaptive streaming encoder; and Flux family of video capture and pre-processing hardware. The new models combine Digital Rapids' long-standing ability to output multiple formats, resolutions and bit rates simultaneously in real time with the capability to capture and encode from two distinct sources concurrently.

Dual-channel, standard-definition StreamZ models feature SDI video input support with embedded audio. High-definition, dual-channel models of StreamZHD and StreamZHD Live ABR support HD-SDI, dual-link HD-SDI, 3G-SDI and standard-definition SDI video inputs. Real-time down-conversion of dual-link and 3G-SDI inputs leverages new facility infrastructures and allows easy repurposing of such sources without the workflow inconvenience and expense of external format converters.

Pixelmetrix is set to launch its Consolidator, its new generation Network Management System, StationView for Simple, Effective Monitoring and the Electronic Couch Potato Video Quality Index for video quality verification.

Consolidator provides centralized access and visibility of key network fault and performance information. Scalable to thousands of probes and millions of data points, it tracks all parameters in real time, through a combination of push notifications and information pull mechanisms, enabling faster fault resolution, thus improving Quality of Service.

Consolidator can also give an aggregated view for display on a video wall. This view combines data collected from different monitoring points within the network. Role-based views and access permissions allow creation of different views based on application – including drill-down screens for troubleshooting and executive dashboards.