Amino announced that its award-winning, single-chip IPTV set-top box for H.264 video now offers full integration with the industry's leading middleware. The AmiNET124, which was launched in June 2005, is capable of running middleware from Alcatel, Kasenna, Orca Interactive and Thales. This enhanced interoperability will enable Telcos to deploy advanced H.264 IPTV services quickly with the reassurance that the customer premises equipment is proven and compatible with the rest of the network.

The AmiNET124 is shipping now and has already been selected in the USA by competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) Cavalier Telephone along with Kasenna LivingRoom & Kasenna MediaBase.

The AmiNET124 is Amino's first set-top box to support the advanced H.264 compression format. Amino's set-top box remains cost effective for Telcos to deploy versus competing multi-chip solutions available on the market today. This is based on its ability to employ a single chip, the Texas Instruments DM642 DSP, for both H.264 decode and application software. The flexibility of the software platform coupled with the product's attractive, award-winning design earned the AmiNET124 the Broadcast Engineering Pick Hit accolade at this year's IBC in Amsterdam. Amino was also recently named as the number one IPTV set-top box vendor in a recent ABI Research report.

Bob Giddy, CEO Amino commented, "Amino is focused solely on the IPTV market. Therefore, our engineers have created a product designed specifically for optimum performance in IPTV applications while driving down per unit costs for Telcos." He continued, "We work closely with partner middleware providers to ensure that all our products offer the highest level of interoperability possible and the AmiNET124 is no exception. We will now look to build upon this list of compatible middleware to ensure maximum flexibility of our H.264 platform."

The new H.264 (also known as MPEG-4 AVC) compression codec allows TV streams to be sent across ADSL telephone lines with lower bandwidth, which would not have been able to support an MPEG-2 stream. Karthik Ranjan, VP Product Marketing added "We are extremely pleased with the speed at which our partners have ported their middleware onto our first MPEG4 H.264 STB. Availability of middleware integrated onto the AmiNET 124 will allow more Telcos to immediately deploy richer IPTV services, enabling operators to offer these services today."