Inlet Technologies announced plans to expand its international presence and deliver technology innovation to the European media and entertainment industries. This week, Inlet will return to Amsterdam for the International Broadcasters Convention (IBC), Europe's premiere event for video content delivery, where it will demonstrate the latest release of its flagship Fathom^TM encoding solution for VC-1 and Windows Media Video (WMV), unveil an industry-first Quality Control software application, and foster new partnerships with international resellers and business leaders.

Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. (TAEC) announced that it is collaborating with Sigma Designs, Inc. to offer a new Linux platform based on the highly integrated Toshiba TX4938 MIPS-based TX System RISC microprocessor, and the Sigma EM8620L digital media processor. The Toshiba/Sigma platform will provide customers with a quick-time-to-market decoder solution for a range of digital multimedia appliances, including DVD players, IP set-top boxes and digital media players.

Juniper Networks, Inc. announced that KT, South Korea's leading telecommunications service provider, has selected the Juniper Networks M320 Multiservice Edge routing platform to create a new, premium IP/MPLS network for the delivery of advanced services such as Voice over IP (VoIP), IP-based television (IPTV) and Wi-Bro, Korea's wireless broadband standard. KT is expected to begin deployments of the M-series platforms by the end of this year, and will continue to expand the network as demand for the new services increases.

Espial announced that Philips has integrated Espial Escape to add valuable browser features in its STB810 semiconductor reference design. This new IPTV set-top box (STB) will offer a compelling environment for deploying Walled Garden applications and a dynamic Internet on TV experience to help operators Own their IPTV Subscriber.

Espial Escape features the latest television and W3C standards by offering HTML 4, JavaScript 1.5, DOM1, DOM2-Events, CSS2.1, CSS-TV, and DVB- HTML to offer a rich and dynamic environment for content creation.

Club iT Corporation and Codemasters Software Company Ltd announce their partnership to bring some of Codemasters' best known and commercially successful game franchises to the G-cluster Gaming on Demand platform.

The partnership will initially see the million-selling Codemasters titles TOCA Race Driver 2 and Colin McRae Rally 2005 made available to users worldwide using Club iT's innovative G-cluster technology.

The games, already published on PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox, will now be available on any broadband-connected device, including existing digital cable and IPTV set-top boxes, entry level PCs, and 3G mobile phones.

As the delivery of high-definition (HD) video broadcast becomes more and more prevalent worldwide, products featuring Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) digital signal processing technologies are deploying to the market today. Worldwide TI customers, leveraging the company's commitment to providing flexible, high-performance digital signal processing (DSP) solutions to both the standard-definition (SD) and high-definition broadcast markets, will display their cutting-edge wares at the annual International Broadcasters Conference (IBC) in Amsterdam, September 9-13. For more information, see http://www.ibc.org.

IPTV technology leaders BitBand and Orca Interactive and Danish system integrator DigiEyeZ A/S announced that Dansk Bredband, a Danish broadband services provider, has selected the three companies to launch IPTV services in Denmark. The services, planned for Copenhagen with later expansion across Denmark and other parts of Scandinavia, will initially include live TV channels and Video On Demand (VOD), allowing subscribers to enjoy high quality entertainment packages in the comfort of their own homes.

Alcatel has been selected by the Principality of Asturias, Spain, to deploy a Fiber to the User - FTTU - network in the mining valley of Asturias. The network will provide thousands of residents of regions near the Caudal, Nalón and Narcea river basins, access to high speed Internet and bandwidth-intensive applications.

Alcatel is the turnkey provider of this 19 million euro project, with full responsibility for the network design and planning, as well as for its deployment, service roll out and maintenance, for the Asturias' local authority.

Alcatel announced that it has been awarded a contract with Uralsviazinform, one of the leading Russian regional operators, for the deployment of a broadband access solution in Uralsviazinform's network in the Ural region. Alcatel will also provide comprehensive business consultancy services.

T-Online has succeeded in gaining another renowned partner from the US film industry – Warner Bros. International Television Distribution – for its Video on Demand service in Germany. In the future, the WBITV's top cinema films will be an attractive enhancement of the service range at www.vod.t-online.de. In addition to the "Harry Potter" titles, films from WBITV include numerous box office hits such as "You've Got Mail" starring Tom Hanks, "Eyes Wide Shut" with Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise, as well as "The Matrix" with Keanu Reaves. The films will be available online concurrent with the pay-per –view window.

IPTV set-top boxes were all over the headlines this week with new partnerships, increased production, and additional sales. Microsoft is back in the spotlight as the company announced it is working together with television equipment manufacturer Scientific-Atlanta on IPTV set-top boxes

Verizon broke new ground by obtaining another licensing contract in Manatee County, Florida to start offering FiOS IPTV.

The article below titled "IPTV: More than an Acronym Du Jour", gives a great insight on some of the features IPTV will offer. Here is a portion of the list:

• Send photos of home movies from your PC directly into the TV and view them on the TV screen
• Send an email message to your friends through the TV screen while you watch a TV show together across great distances
• Use a cell phone to change channels on your TV
• Allows service providers to deliver only those channels the consumer wants at a given time, rather than all the channels available as happens with today’s cable TV networks.
• Receive brief and unobtrusive telephone network caller ID information on your TV screen while still watching TV, to decide whether you want to answer the phone or not; this would enable you to screen telemarketers, among other things.
• Play video games using your TV set rather than your computer

Here are some other stories worth reading...

Espial, a leading provider of client IPTV applications and middleware announced that Kreatel, a market leader in set-top box solutions, has licensed Espial Escape.

"Espial Escape provides service providers with an advanced standards- based platform for developing content services to increase customer loyalty," said Lars Bengtsson, Kreatel President and CEO. "What was important in our decision making process was Espial Escape's pre-integration with popular IPTV middleware. This advantage ensured we could build the entire solution according to our tight schedule."

September 19-21, 2005
Frankfurt, Germany

From 19th - 21st September 2005, International Quality and Productivity Center (IQPC) hosts the show "IPTV - Triple play... and beyond" in Frankfurt, Germany.

High-level speakers from companies such as Fastweb, Telefonica, HanseNet, Versatel, wilhelm.tel, SevenOne Intermedia, and many others will report about first-hand experiences and trials. Fixed and mobile telcos, cable network provider, satellite and content provider will debate and confront the latest developments of IPTV technologies and their business strategies.

Allegro, the Digital Video Technology company focused on the H.264/AVC standard, will demonstrate its AL1000 Audio/Video Real-Time Encoder for broadcast applications at next IBC 2005 in Amsterdam.

The AL1000 performs H.264/MPEG-4 AVC High Profile Level 3 (Standard Definition) broadcast quality real-time encoding without any frame drop, with bitrates ranging from 1.5 Mbps to 2 Mbps. It can be used for both VBR operation (e.g. for satellite multiplexing) and CBR operation (e.g. for IPTV).

Envivio Inc., the leading technology provider of MPEG-4 (including AVC / H.264) systems which support broadcast services from mobile to HD, announced that its 4Caster Mobile Series encoders have been selected by CANAL+ Group for its DVB-H trial of video services to handheld devices. CANAL+ Group is the French leader in Pay-TV and digital TV Broadcast and in the production and distribution of films. The optimized Envivio encoders compress content to very low bit rates that are ideal for mobile operators wanting to enrich their services beyond voice to offer digital television and on-demand video, and for broadcasters such as CANAL+ wanting to repurpose content to address these new markets.