--Supplies Systems to DIGITAL FORTY FOUR, Tele Granducato, Mediatotal
--Forms Reseller Partnerships in Multiple European Countries
Finnish MHP specialist, Sofia Digital, has announced a number of new partnerships and customer wins over the past few days:
- It says that it has supplied its Arena Digital Teletext system and its BackStage Manager software to broadcast transmission provider, Broadcast Australia, for use in the DIGITAL FORTY FOUR MHP Datacasting project. (Note: the latter is a trial datacast service, run by Broadcast Australia, which was licensed by the Australian Broadcasting Authority in December, 2004 to run for three years in Sydney.) The Sofia technologies are currently enabling various applications for the project, including a news, weather and sports service that features constantly updated content from the Australian Broadcast Corporation; additional interactive services are scheduled to launch later this month, including informational services from the Federal Parliament and the state government of New South Wales. Sofia's Arena Digital Teletext provides a system for integrating, repurposing and transmitting content for digital teletext in the broadcast headend and presenting the service for viewer navigation in the MHP receiver. Sofia says that by using Arena Digital Teletext, Broadcast Australia was able to quickly integrate various content sources with the Sofia Backstage Author server, which manages the structure of the digital teletext service and the templates created for it. Backstage Manager, meanwhile, connects Backstage Author with the MHP object carousel, allowing Broadcast Australia to automate the content flow from the content source to the MHP receiver. Two Sofia interactive TV applications are broadcast to the MHP receiver: a Launcher application, which handles preloading and launching of the digital teletext service, and an XHTML browser application which powers the digital teletext service itself. "Sofia offered us an integrated solution from a single vendor that included both an automated content publishing platform as well as a set of MHP applications to enable presentation to the end user," David Hilliger, product development manager at Broadcast Australia, said in a prepared statement. "Importantly for us, the system also supports integration of third-party content providers into the DIGITAL FORTY FOUR trial through common use of the Sofia Backstage publishing system and the Sofia Arena Digital Teletext browser. Sofia's off-line development software also allows content providers to independently develop and test their services before going to air, streamlining the development process. Sofia worked with us to understand our requirements, were responsive to our needs, and worked hard to help us achieve the result we wanted."
- It says that it has formed partnerships with resellers in Italy, the Czech Republic, Germany, Spain, Portugal and the Baltic countries. Its partner in Italy (where its customers include Mediaset, Telespazio and Tele Granducato) is Comtek Video Enterprise. Its partner in the Czech Republic (which will also represent it in Slovakia) is TietoEnator. Its partner in Germany is the Institut fuer Rundfunktechnik (IRT), with which it has teamed on a joint end-to-end solution for MHP service creation, testing and playout. The solution, which the companies are jointly marketing, integrates Sofia Digital's Sofia Backstage Manager and Author products with IRT's DVB Playout Server. Sofia's partner for the Spanish and Portuguese markets is WirelessZT, which also has a presence in Latin America and the US. Its partner for the Baltic market, meanwhile, is Indata Eesti, which will represent its SMS-to-TV products.
- It says that it has delivered an interactive TV system to Tele Granducato, an Italian regional broadcaster that serves the Livorno area (note: it secured the "win" through its Italian representative, Comtek Video Enterprise). The system is supporting a number of MHP-based interactive DTT services, including a digital teletext service with local news, sports results and public information, and a dedicated advertising service. The system is composed of the Sofia Arena Digital Teletext system and Sofia Backstage Manager: the former allows remote content contribution by a local newspaper and local advertisers, while the latter is used to publish MHP applications--Sofia's Launcher app and its XHTML browser engine--which enable presentation to the end-user, as well as to publish various content streams to an MHP object carousel, supplied by Strategy & Technology. "The cooperation between Sofia Digital, CVE as the Italian partner, and Tele Granducato allowed us to launch digital terrestrial broadcasts in short time and introduce MHP services easily in order to enrich our programming for end-users in Central Italy," Tele Granducato CEO, Fabio Daddi, said in a prepared statement. "Thanks to Sofia we were able to deploy an MHP news service directly from our publishing company, Il Messaggero Marittimo, and now we are at the forefront of DVB-T in our region."
- It says that it is partnering with Mediatotal, a Norwegian company that operates teletext services for a number of major Norwegian TV channels, and that is planning to launch MHP-based interactive TV services for Norway's digital terrestrial television platform. It is providing Mediatotal with its Backstage Starter Kit for MHP, which the latter will initially use to develop a digital teletext service and a classified advertising service. According to Sofia, the Starter Kit includes all the necessary hardware and software for delivering return path-enabled MHP services, and features an MHP authoring system that employs a content template architecture. "The cooperation with Sofia Digital allows Mediatotal to establish a leading position in interactive services for Norwegian digital terrestrial TV," Mediatotal CEO, Camilla Andersson, said in a prepared statement. "Our track record in teletext services for NRK, TV Norge and TV3 is such that we want to be ready for the future when digital terrestrial in Norway takes off next year. Sofia Digital is the perfect partner to help us ramp up our MHP capabilities."
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