ICTV, creator of HeadendWare, the broadband industry's most powerful platform for the delivery and distribution of compelling interactive television content, announced the availability of new features designed to enhance the subscriber experience and improve performance for cable and network operators.

Release 5.0 significantly increases the utility of HeadendWare to cable and IPTV subscribers by supporting multi-player Internet games, Picture-in- Picture (PIP) capabilities for thin-client set-top boxes without dual tuners, multiple languages for international deployments, and Channel Linking directly to interactive content relevant to the most recently displayed TV channel. In addition, taking advantage of experience gained in cable system deployments in the U.S. and abroad, ICTV has engineered technical advances that dramatically increase the operating efficiency and resiliency of HeadendWare.

ICTV will be demonstrating the new features at the Cable Television Laboratories Summer Conference August 14-16 in Keystone, CO.

"Relationships with industry-leading content providers and continuing technical achievement have been equal contributors to the progress of HeadendWare," said Jeff Miller, president and CEO of ICTV. "Through the launch of HeadendWare 5.0, we are able to provide the best content showcase and advertising medium yet for over 40 ICTV partners and a stronger subscriber acquisition and retention tool for our customers."

HeadendWare 5.0 increases operating efficiency up to 300 percent, enabling cable system operators to run up to 5,000 simultaneous interactive sessions per operations server. The latest release also features streamlined backup and restore capabilities and allows technical personnel to increase system capacity or perform key maintenance tasks with no system shutdown.

HeadendWare is a registered trademark and ICTV is a trademark of ICTV, Inc.