Vidanti is showing a live demonstration of integrated Definition satellite TV, video-on-demand over IP, web browsing and Voice-over-IP at its booth in IPTV world sector at IBC. Dramatic sales of HD Ready television sets are not matched by a corresponding take-up of HD programming, with the result that many more consumer homes have the means to watch HDTV than are actually watching it. One of the factors behind this is the bandwidth required.

SeaChange unveiled its TV Platform Developer Program at IBC 2007 this week. Leading providers of applications and infrastructure solutions are embracing this IPTV catalyst, taking full advantage of SeaChange’s open standards-based TV Navigator middleware to participate in a broad marketplace of seamlessly integrated options for television operators.

Five of the TV Platform Development Partners announced at IBC include Freethinking, Integra5, Snap TV, TwoWay TV, and Verimatrix. The program is designed to deliver value-added applications that leverage the modularity of SeaChange’s TV Navigator middleware. Partners gain a significant lift amid SeaChange’s global IPTV activities, including access to product support, resources, and tools to assist in porting and developing products and services for TV Platform.

VeriSign announces the launch of its Three-Screen Solution for Media and Entertainment Companies in Europe. VeriSign has combined its expertise in digital services with an international supplier of digital media technology solutions, ioko, to enable companies to provide consumers with a compelling digital experience across multiple screens.

VeriSign and ioko have enabled successful mobile and broadband content delivery solutions including Channel 4’s 4oD, Sky Anytime on PC and for other telecommunications, media and entertainment leaders in Europe, Asia and North America.

Ambarella announces a new video CODEC chip targeting the broadcast market. The Ambarella Ambacast 3000 processor more than doubles the computing power of its predecessors and can be programmed for increased video quality as well as encoding full 1080x1920 resolution HD at 60 frames per second in a single chip. The platform enables the design of broadcast encoders to increase picture quality, while the low power and high integration allows a reduced form factor and power consumption.

Entertainment Asia Network (EAN), an Asia entertainment industry news and research source, has announced an impressive line-up of top level entertainment executives from Asia and the US who will speak at this year’s 2nd annual Asia Pacific Entertainment & Media (APEM) Summit 2007 in Los Angeles. These industry veterans will discuss and analyze key topics relevant to local and global entertainment companies looking to do business in the film, TV, video game, mobile and Internet content industries in Asia, including regions such as China, Japan, South Korea, India, and Hong Kong, as well as the US.

ATEMET announces that French television broadcaster M6 has standardized its IPTV encoding platform around the ATEME KyrionT H.264 solution. M6 can now deploy 9 SD channels and its HD channel M6 HD directly through ADSL. The entire ADSL encoding head-end has been standardized on Kyrion to achieve the best-possible quality and bandwidth efficiency.

Orca and muvee announce an agreement to develop and market LivePhotos, the first-ever application for automatic movie-making over IPTV platforms. LivePhotos combines Orca’s use-generated content capabilities with muvee’s automatic video editing and photo movie software to produce a groundbreaking new service designed to enhance IPTV service offerings. Orca will demonstrate LivePhotos, which is based on RiGHTv scalable architecture, at the IBC exhibition in Amsterdam in booth 2.230 from September 7-11, 2007.

Pace and CacheLogic are demonstrating how assisted peer-to-peer delivery networks could change the way consumers access content, including payTV, in the future. The technology demonstration shows how Pace broadband-enabled set-top boxes can form a P2P infrastructure via the Internet to store, distribute and access content both securely and quickly. Assisted by CacheLogic servers, this P2P infrastructure will enable operators to provide a wider range of on-demand content and services to their subscribers, including ‘long tail’ or niche content. By exploiting the storage available across all PVR users on a network, it is possible to make a huge number of titles available to end users without the expense of maintaining a large central server base.

Digital Fountain and Neptuny launch of a new server-based software solution to dramatically improve quality of service for IPTV providers. ToughStream Server is a stand-alone, enterprise class software solution that can be installed on a standard server within an operator’s IPTV head-end, protecting the entire network against packet loss, the leading cause of IPTV customer complaints.

ToughStream Server was jointly developed under a new partnership between Digital Fountain and Neptuny. Based on Digital Fountain’s ToughStream solution, ToughStream Server includes additional technology from Neptuny that enables fast, easy deployment of ToughStream on an IPTV provider’s standard server equipment. Because it is a highly flexible, highly configurable software solution, ToughStream Server can be installed, configured, and fully deployed in a very short period of time.

Harmonic announces that Portugal Telecom has deployed Harmonic’s market-leading DiviCom Electra MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) encoders to power its meo nationwide IPTV service. The digital video headend includes the Electra 7000 high definition encoders and Electra 5400 standard definition encoders, and was implemented at Portugal Telecom by Novabase/OctalTV, a leading video system integrator in Portugal. The Harmonic solution seamlessly delivers high quality broadcast video including picture-in-picture and is a component of the Microsoft MediaRoom multimedia and IPTV software platform as part of an overall system designed and integrated by Alcatel-Lucent.

Fujitsu Network Communications announces that Mountain Telephone has deployed its FLASHWAVE optical networking products and NETSMART management solution to deliver IPTV services to West Liberty, Kentucky. An expanded suite of voice, data and video services will be possible through the use of these Fujitsu platforms.

Cisco announces that Free (Iliad Group), has doubled the capacity of its Cisco-based IP Next-Generation Network in a drive to enhance the quality of experience for its more than 2.5 million subscribers. Less than a year after installing the first Cisco CRS-1 carrier routing systems, Free has doubled the capacity of its core network by upgrading its full 16-slot CRS-1 systems, with a potential capacity of up to 1.2 terabits per second, to a multi-chassis configuration offering a capacity of up to 2.5 Tbps. The operation was completed without any interruption to subscriber services.

Motorola revealed that BT has utilized Motorola's VODxchange encoding capability as part of its IPTV solution that helped deliver a successful launch of BT Vision Sport. With production and content processing technology delivered by BT's Media and Broadcast division, BT Vision Sport provides a next-generation IPTV sports service to consumers across the UK.

Launched 11th August 2007, BT Vision Sports allows BT broadband subscribers to access on-demand coverage of the day's premiership action. Available from 10pm on the day of the match, viewers can pause, fast forward and rewind near-live footage of full games.

TANDBERG Television announces that its iPlex UltraCompression IPTV head-end has been selected by Swisscom for the next step of its Bluewin IPTV service. Swisscom and TANDBERG Television commenced their collaboration with the trial of the Bluewin IPTV system in autumn 2004, followed by commercial deployment in November 2006. Now the companies are working together to ensure that Swisscom can continue to provide a world-class IPTV service to it customers, through leveraging TANDBERG Television’s broadcast expertise and its award-winning iPlex UltraCompression high definition and standard definition system. The solution offers a range of advanced video processing features with bandwidth improvements of up to 50%, industry leading density and improved video quality.

Narrowstep and theONE.tv recently launched a new Internet TV channel focusing on live music entertainment. theONE.tv will showcase performances from some the world’s most iconic venues including a new series of October launch concerts in London, New York and Los Angeles.

Available to anyone with a broadband connection, theONE.tv is a global 24/7 music broadcaster using Narrowstep’s Internet TV platform telvOSTM to deliver the highest quality video possible on the Internet. theONE.tv, which is available at http://www.theone.tv, will feature some of the world’s finest musicians and is working with major artists and music venues in the UK and US to film and broadcast live concerts globally over the Internet and via mobile phone.