TANDBERG Television announced that it has extended its integration collaboration with Microsoft to offer broadband network operators a complete suite of TANDBERG advanced encoding solutions for both Windows Media Video 9 (Microsoft's implementation of VC-1, the proposed SMPTE standard) and MPEG-4 AVC, fully integrated with the Microsoft TV IPTV Edition software platform. The move enables broadband operators to offer competitive IP-based digital television services with live, broadcast television programming at half the bit-rates required for MPEG-2, while maintaining the same picture quality.

"By extending our Microsoft TV IPTV Edition platform codec support to include MPEG-4 AVC, in addition to WMV9 (VC-1), we are giving operators a choice of codecs as they make their important moves to IPTV," said Noel Matthews, director of broadband at TANDBERG Television. "These advanced compression solutions allow operators to develop more effective and competitive IPTV offerings, permitting more channels to be transmitted in bandwidth-limited pipes and more customers to be reached in DSL and DOCSIS systems. The end result of this collaboration with Microsoft TV will be an exciting and enhanced TV experience for consumers."

TANDBERG Television's integrated WMV9 (VC-1) and MPEG-4 AVC solution enables volume deployment of live broadcast content and represents a key component in the end-to-end delivery of IPTV services using Microsoft TV software. Microsoft and TANDBERG Television are already working on commercial deployments and conducting technical trials of their combined IPTV solutions with broadband operators in Asia Pacific, Europe and North America.

"We have been working closely with TANDBERG Television for two and a half years to accelerate the availability of IPTV services for network operators around the world," said Phil Corman, director, partner business development for the Microsoft TV Division at Microsoft. "The combination of the Microsoft TV IPTV platform and TANDBERG Television's real-time encoders for both WMV9 (VC-1) and MPEG-4 AVC brings high-quality live broadcast video to consumers with improved price, performance and economies of scale to network operators. Our work with TANDBERG takes the promise of full-scale 'triple play' one step closer to commercial reality and demonstrates the growing momentum for integrated IPTV entertainment."