Based on over 470 IPTV Service Providers, MRG's new IPTV Market Leader Report September 2006 ranks about 60 different IPTV vendors in four different regional markets and globally, grouped into six different IPTV product categories.

"Mergers and acquisitions continue to have a major impact on the market," states Bob Larribeau, IPTV Program Director for MRG. "Tandberg's acquisition of SkyStream and Motorola's acquisition of Kreatel put both companies into leading positions; and the Alcatel/Lucent merger will have a similar effect."

Juniper Networks, Inc. announced a series of enhancements for its E320 Broadband Services Router that provide increased performance, flexibility and efficiency for IPTV and multiplay networks. Juniper is delivering new 10 Gigabit Ethernet and High Density Gigabit Ethernet interface cards with advanced multicasting optimization capabilities that can reduce the cost and complexity of deploying IPTV and other multiplay services and further extend the platform's leadership in next-generation multiplay networks.

TANDBERG Television is unveiling its next-generation high definition (HD) and standard definition (SD) MPEG-4 AVC encoding solutions at IBC 2006 (Hall 1:461). The move continues the company's market leading momentum in the MPEG-4 AVC arena and brings a step change in digital video distribution by combining the broadest choice of density and enhanced features with the industry's leading picture quality versus performance through bandwidth improvements of up to 50% over currently deployed MPEG-4 AVC units.

Concurrent and Nordija, a Danish developer of interactive applications for IP-based video services, announced that Nordija has selected Concurrent's MediaHawk 4000 video server for use in their Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) middleware platform. The Nordija middleware offers a TV portal that assists the viewer selecting channels and using other features such as video-on-demand, electronic program guides, network personal video recording, and personal channel mosaic. Both companies will be displaying their respective technologies at IBC 2006, Nordija in Hall 3, Stand #131 and Concurrent in Hall 4, booth #262.

Latens Systems, Europe’s leading provider of IPTV Conditional Access (CA), today announces that it has signed a deal to supply the CA system for Irish telecom provider Smart Telecom’s SmartVision IPTV service. The contract follows the successful conclusion of a pilot of the Latens system with the Dublin-based operator.

Optibase, Ltd., a leading provider of advanced digital video solutions, today announced that it will demonstrate its IPTV and digital video solutions at IBC 2006, September 8-12, 2006 in Amsterdam. Optibase will showcase its flexible model design providing customers with future-proof video solutions to meet the evolving requirements of Telcos and service providers.

The worldwide subscriber base for Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) services is set to expand rapidly by 2010, inciting a war between video providers, both old and new. It has been estimated that global IPTV subscribers’ figure will cross 63 million in 2010 from 5 million in 2005, with a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 65.99%.

AT&T Inc. and TVN Entertainment today announced a distribution agreement to deliver an array of TVN video-on-demand (VOD) content as part of the AT&T U-verse TV programming.

AT&T Inc. and ViewNow today announced a distribution agreement to deliver an array of ViewNow video-on-demand (VOD) content as part of the AT&T U-verseSM TV programming.

HP announced that it has worked with Intel to open two Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) test centers to help carriers and broadband providers take advantage of the opportunities of the emerging technology.

With successful IPTV trials well underway and an impressive lineup of premier programmers committed, SES AMERICOM, an SES GLOBAL company (Euronext Paris and Luxembourg stock exchanges: SESG), today announced it will integrate a middleware system powered by Myrio, a Siemens company, into its open IP-PRIMETM IPTV content distribution platform. The deal follows several months of joint testing and pre-integration work on the innovative IP television solution.

Demand for digital television in Europe will reach a new record in 2006, according to the latest research from Strategy Analytics' Broadband Media and Communications service. Nearly 19 million homes will buy digital television for the first time this year, an increase of 20 percent, according to the report, "Digital TV Subscriber Market Forecast Europe." The most popular option for new subscribers is still digital terrestrial TV (DTTV), with more than 10 million new homes added this year. But the newest entrant, IPTV, is also beginning to make inroads and take share from established satellite and cable providers. This report predicts that 16 million homes will subscribe to IPTV by 2010.

Envivio Inc announced today that its 4Caster™ B3 encoding system was chosen by Globecast Spain to provide the first MPEG-4 contribution feed in Spain. Globecast Spain is the first company in the country to deploy MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 contribution feeds commercially, resulting in a significant reduction in terrestrial and satellite network transmission costs.

Envivio Inc. will showcase a technology demonstration with a statistical rate control module for broadcast mobile TV networks at IBC2006 in its stand #1.550.This is the world’s first demonstration of next generation IP-based statistical rate control capabilities for broadcast mobile TV and broadcast distribution applications that leverages the arrival of IP in a network that traditionally used non-IP MPEG-2 transport stream (TS).The aim of this demonstration is to illustrate within a DVB-H broadcast mobile environment the bandwidth optimization and quality gains obtained by the Envivio statistical rate control approach as compared to strict constant bit rate control.The demonstration also illustrates how this approach to statistical rate control reduces the number of elements in a system and employs standard IP routing equipment, therefore keeping costs to a minimum.

Snell & Wilcox, a world leader in image processing, conversion, and compression technologies for the film and broadcast industries, has developed a groundbreaking system for the automated repurposing and delivery of content for mobile TV applications.