TinselVision.com changed its online content distribution arrangements with Star India and other licensors which extend viewing rights to internet users in India while expanding audience engagement globally. The revised licensing terms address customer access and convenience in two major steps. TinselVision will now deliver television programming entirely free to its rapidly growing audience in a deal which also marks its first foray within the Indian domestic market.

Harmonic announced that PCCW has deployed Harmonic’s market-leading DiviCom Electra 7000 HD MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) encoders to power its HD channel service in Hong Kong. PCCW is a telecommunications service provider offering a full complement of video, voice, data and mobile services to its customers across Hong Kong, and operates now TV, Hong Kong’s largest IPTV service with over 882,000 subscribers. PCCW also utilizes Harmonic’s SD encoders to deliver its full lineup of more than 150 broadcast channels, as well as Harmonic’s VOD servers and software.

More than half a million customers will experience IPTV and other interactive multimedia services through Vastar Cable TV System’s new network, powered by Ethernet solutions from Nortel. Vastar is Taiwan’s first cable TV service provider licensed for fixed-line business services. To better serve its customers, Vastar Cable is using Nortel Ethernet technology to deliver digital TV, video-on-demand services, live gaming, tailored Web portals and other interactive IP multimedia services for TV. The solution also enables Internet access on IP phones, mobile phones, portable media players and laptops.

Juniper Networks announces that Hong Kong-based telecommunications service provider PCCW IMS Limited has increased the scale and performance of its broadband network with E320 Broadband Services Routers. The E320 improves the capacity and performance of PCCW’s broadband network and fully leverages its existing installed base of Juniper E-series routers.

PCCW has combined the granular bandwidth management, high performance and reliability of the E-series portfolio with the sophisticated policy management of the SDX-300 Service Delivery System—which is an important component of the Juniper’s Session and Resource Control portfolio—to offer flexible, high-quality and individualized services such as now TV, along with its interactive and Video-On-Demand service, Netvigator broadband Internet access, and the fixed-line PCCW eye multimedia service.

Cisco talks about its strategy to help service providers in Asia Pacific deliver an end-to-end IPTV solution. The solution, which delivers high quality video with optimal service reliability, will be demonstrated at its booth at the IPTV World Forum Asia 2007. Cisco is the Diamond Sponsor of IPTV World Forum Asia 2007, which runs Dec. 5-7 in Singapore.

Cisco is seeing strong momentum for its IPTV solutions. Among its recent customers are Deutsche Telecom, FastWeb, Free, SES Americom, T-Com Montenegro, T-HT Croatia and Lithuanian provider TEO.

PCCW of Hong Kong has selected the Redback Networks SmartEdge multi-service edge router platform to help deliver video-on-demand and other broadband services. PCCW is the largest IPTV service provider in the world, serving more than 800,000 subscribers. It is also one of the largest broadband carriers in China with more than 1 million customers. The addition of PCCW as a carrier customer puts Redback at the center of more than 50 percent of the largest IPTV deployments in world. Other Redback customers deploying IPTV and broadband video services include AT&T, Belgacom, China Telecom, China Netcom, ChungHwa Telekom, Korea Telecom, KPN, Neuf Cegetel, among others.

Verimatrix announces that it is providing the security solution for the world’s first fully integrated IPTV triple-play deployment in Qatar. This new service from Qtel offers voice, broadband Internet and MPEG4-AVC encoded IPTV over its upgraded infrastructure to subscribers across the state of Qatar. Verimatrix’s Video Content Authority System will protect MPEG4-AVC data streams through advanced encryption to prevent unauthorized access or piracy and to provide premium content suppliers with confidence that their revenue streams are secure.

ATEME’s world-leading encoding technology has been selected for exclusive use by Korea Telecom (Seoul) for their new MegaTV fiber-to-the-home service. This new service offers converged voice, data and IPTV service to homes throughout the Republic of Korea. Korea Telecom has purchased a significant number of ATEME H.264 File Encoder licenses and will use ATEME technology exclusively to process all of the movies available on MegaTV.

Korea Telecom will be delivering a wide range of content – more than 2,000 hours per month – to its subscribers, using the acclaimed ATEME technology to provide the highest-possible audio/video quality.

SeaChange is delivering the foundation for telecommunications giant KDDI's new on-demand television business. KDDI provides VoIP-phone, backbone Internet and other IT services to more than 60 cable television operators across Japan. Leveraging technologies and professional services from SeaChange through Panasonic, this summer KDDI's fully managed, end-to-end on-demand platform will empower cable operators across Japan to quickly launch their own on-demand services.

On-demand services will be centrally managed at KDDI network operations centers initially, with the ability for each cable operator to expand and enhance their service according to their regional coverage. Popular television and movie content will be provided by KDDI, and cable operators will have the ability to provide their own local content, which will also be managed through the KDDI central site.

NDS has been selected by KT as the provider of content protection solutions for the company’s Mega TV service. Megapass is the flagship high-speed broadband service provided by KT, currently providing broadband services to over 6.51 million subscribers. KT continues to invest heavily in capital expenditure and is scheduled to complete the build-out of nationwide FTTH broadband by 2010.

Building on its broadband success, KT has now launched the ‘Mega TV on Demand’ TV service via broadband. The telecom giant will initially offer the on-demand service in Seoul, Gwa-Cheon, Dong-Tan and other selected cities in Kyung-Ki province.

Singapore Telecommunications Limited (SingTel) rolled out this last weekend the launch of its IPTV service. The new service, named mio TV, boasts a large range of video-on-demand titles with movies from major Hollywood movie studios including Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox and Disney. mio TV allows customers to search for content by genre, title or actor's name.

mio TV's a la carte price plans allow customers to pay only for what they want to watch.

mio TV is one of the first to introduce on-demand channels to the Singapore market. This option allows viewers to choose from up to 25 selected movies for unlimited viewing for only $12 per month. That's right--movies, anytime, for as low as 50 cents each.

All mio TV customers will receive one free on demand 'movie-of-the month' - every single month. Starting 1 September 2007, anyone with a mio TV set-top box will be able to access this movie whenever they want, as many times as they want.

UTStarcom has won a bid to deploy its RollingStream end-to-end IPTV solution with China Telecom for a new commercial IPTV network in China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. With a total population of more than five million people, the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region is located near the geographical central northern edge of China and bordered by the Shaanxi and Gansu provinces as well as the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

KT has signed a deal with Internet content service operator NHN to cooperatively develop the IPTV service Mega TV. NHN owns popular Korean portal Naver, and is expected to provide a wide range of services through the TV platform. These will include a TV search service, full-duplex data channel service user Naver, Hangame and Junior Naver, and various other digital data services provided by websites.

Streaming21 announced the success of a joint hotel IPTV system with Tsinghua Tongfang. This co-developed hotel IPTV system with highlighted HDTV features, is already implemented at 40 premium hotels with over 10,000 guest rooms installed in China. Due to the upcoming 2008 Olympic Games, this fully-integrated system will be expanded to 80 hotels with at least 20,000 guest rooms by 2007 year-end.

The co-developed hotel IPTV system provides users with instant access to a wide selection of superior in-room entertainment and real-time information services integrating TV, VOD, and interactive hotel information system all together. Combining Streaming21's award-winning streaming video solutions with THTF's strong integration capabilities, the advanced IPTV hotel system provides easy access to interactive information and compelling entertainment applications such as HDTV, Movie on Demand, TV broadcasting, TV games and TV shopping, etc.

Sumitomo Electric Industries has selected Intellon’s HomePlug-based INT6000 IC to enable in-home distribution of KDDI’s IPTV services in Japan. Intellon’s ICs are used in Sumitomo’s G02P1 PLC adapters, which provide connectivity from the broadband access modem to the IPTV set-top-box using the existing electrical wiring in the customer’s home.

Based on the HomePlug AV global standard, Intellon’s powerline communications ICs allow KDDI subscribers to easily create an in-home network for their IPTV service. In addition, Sumitomo’s G02P1 PLC adapters include robust network security encryption (128-bit AES) and Quality of Service features as part of the INT6000 ICs that are mandatory for VOD (Video on Demand) and content distribution services.