The brand new developer lab called "IPTVBox" is a one-stop shop for developing and testing interactive applications for IPTV.

Based on the powerful Sun Ultra 20 Workstation, with its next generation 64 bit AMD Opteron processor, the iTVBox uses the NetBeans Integrated Development Environment combined with DigiSoft's Software Development Kit to create Java interactive applications to run on a variety of IPTV Set Top Boxes and Middlewares.

"The concept is based on the iTVBox product that we released last year in Europe for Digital Terrestrial Broadcasters developing interactive applications." Said Fintan Mc Kiernan, Senior Vice President Global IPTV Solution Sales for DigiSoft.tv

"We initially launched the iTVBox for Broadcasters, but found strong interest from system integrators and software companies that support broadcasters, as well as advertisers and government bodies. We expect to see similar cross-discipline demand for our new IPTVBox taking into account the considerable interest that has been shown globally in IPTV technologies. We are extending our international DigiHost User Group to cover the emerging IPTVBox community who will also have access to the extensive resources of the Sun Developer Network."

"There is a whole new world of opportunities for interactive TV within IPTV, leveraging the always-on broadband connection necessitated by IPTV, which is also the life blood for engaging interactive TV."