Amino returned home from this year's IBC event in Amsterdam after collecting one of the industry's most prestigious awards for its latest IPTV set-top box. The AmiNET124 was awarded the Broadcast Engineering Pick Hit Award to the best IP set-top box for its innovative design and advanced performance - features which have already led to both customer interest and actual deployments only a few months following the product's initial launch at Supercomm in June 2005.

The AmiNET124 is unique for its use of a single TI DM642 Digital Signal Processor (DSP) to run both the Video decode as well as the application software, making it a highly cost-effective single-chip solution, which supports the latest H.264 video compression technology. This ability is achieved through Amino's highly innovative IPTV software platform, which enables the single DSP to run both applications.

The Broadcast Engineering Pick Hit Awards, now in their 21st year, are judged anonymously by readers of Broadcast Engineering World Edition, and a cross section of professionals from the broadcast, network and satellite industries. Generally associated with the NAB Exhibition in the USA, this is the first year that Broadcast Engineering has conveyed the Pick Hit Awards at IBC. The technology selected for the Awards is chosen by the judging panel rather than the editors and publishers of the magazine, thus ensuring the impartiality and integrity of the judging process.

"We are extremely proud to have received this award for the AmiNET124," commented Bob Giddy, CEO of Amino. "The model not only reflects the award-winning design of Amino's set-top box range but offers advanced H.264 decoding and performance, thanks to the hardware architecture and our flexible software stack which offers compatibility with a maximum range of middleware." He continued, "As with all our products, we have worked in close collaboration with key middleware providers to ensure compatibility across the board, offering peace of mind to our customers that our products will work seamlessly with their chosen IPTV infrastructure."

The AmiNET124 is the company's first H.264 compatible single-chip IPTV set-top box available for Telco IPTV deployments. Cavalier Telephone, a Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC) in the USA has already selected the AmiNET124 for its IPTV service roll-out and other companies have expressed a strong interest in the model which is 2 to 3 times smaller than current alternatives.

"HDTV and H.264 compression technologies were both very hot topics at IBC this year," noted Giddy. "Amino has been able to provide its customers with a powerful and attractive product which will allow Telcos to deploy H.264 IPTV services quickly and easily. The AmiNET124 was supported unanimously and present on many exhibitors' stands at IBC. This reflects the wide acceptance of the product."