Even Technologies Inc., a company specializing in advanced digital image and video coding techniques, announced that the company will be delivering its first end-to-end Internet Protocol television, or IPTV, system to Silver Star Telephone Company in Freedom, WY. The Even Technologies PSI_V solution uses a revolutionary compression technology built on a patented system powered by the Pixelworks BSP-15 Broadband Signal Processor ICs for delivering real-time broadcast television and video-on-demand applications.

The initial installation for Even Technologies' PSI_V system will serve a roll-out of IPTV services by Silver Star Telephone Company which is able to utilize the existing telco infrastructure to deliver more than 125 channels of broadcast TV and video-on-demand to customers, including service to three televisions per household. The system has been tested in ongoing field trials beginning in early 2005.

Even has designed an IPTV system that employs BSP-15 chips throughout the deployment in both the encoding and decoding roles, utilizing the fully programmable, video-centric architecture of the processor to implement its proprietary PSI™ video codec that enables DVD-quality video at 750 kbps, roughly half the bit rate needed for H.264 or VC1. Even's dmetm video encoder headend tasks multiple BSP-15™ chips to encode content in real-time from QCIF up to HD resolution.

Content from Even's video encoder is streamed over Silver Star's existing infrastructure to the consumer's home, where it is decoded and output to the television by the dme-500tm triple-play set-top box, which is based on the Pixelworks Sailfish hardware reference design. In the second half of 2006, Even plans to migrate its encoder and set-top box systems to the PWBSP-16™ Broadband Signal Processor IC.

With its higher level of integration, the PWBSP-16 will further reduce the total system bill of materials while allowing Even and Silver Star to deploy an HD-compatible set-top box.

"Our participation in early IPTV roll-outs, such as this one with Even Technologies, is important for us to grow our experience and knowledge base in the IPTV market. We see this as the future, and our ability to customer-harden our solutions will help us as we work to integrate IPTV functions from the set-top box to the television set itself," said Brett Monello, Vice President, Video and Image Processing at Pixelworks, Inc. "We are excited to work with Even Technologies which is introducing exciting enhancements that are bringing the IPTV model to reality through its proprietary codecs."

"Our design and deployment using the Pixelworks' PWBSP series of Broadband Signal Processors has allowed us to build an end-to-end solution that delivers a profitable business model for the telephone company. Working with the team at Pixelworks, we have been able to create a system that permits immediate deployment of broadcast video on existing outside plants, overcoming the need for costly and time consuming network rebuilds," said Nick Ringma, President and CEO at Even Technologies Inc. "This marks a major commercial milestone in a long standing relationship between our companies."

This week, Even Technologies is exhibiting its live encoder and set-top box solution for the telephone industry at the CommunicAsia show in Singapore.