Ligos Powers Interactive Multichannel Mosaics for Cablevision Mexico

San Francisco-based digital video processing specialist, Ligos, says that its MediaRig Mosaic technology is powering interactive multichannel mosaics for Mexico's largest digital cable operator, Cablevision Mexico. "Cablevision strives to remain ahead of the curve when it comes to deploying the latest innovations to our digital cable subscribers," Cablevision Mexico CEO, Jean Paul Broc Haro, said in a prepared statement. "Having evaluated a number of options, we found MediaRig Mosaic to be the most versatile and reliable solution to bring this cutting-edge viewing experience to our subscribers. Further, Ligos provided exemplary support and features that allowed us to easily implement a key enhancement--dynamic advertising--for our digital mosaic channels."

According to Ligos, MediaRig Mosaic enables interactive mosaic channels even on legacy, low-resource DCT-2000 set-top boxes. Channels powered by the technology present viewers with a tiled "video montage" layout of multiple thumbnails of live video screens; viewers then use the arrow buttons on their remotes to navigate through and highlight individual tiles. When a tile is highlighted, its accompanying audio can be heard, and viewers can then select it for viewing in full-screen mode. MediaRig Mosaic is intended to enable operators to group content together into separate portals for, for example, news, sports, family and premium content, and to incorporate advertising and service promotions into their multiscreen mosaics. The Cablevision Mexico deployment sees the operator offering a "master" mosaic channel that links to a number of thematically organized sub-mosaics. The mosaics also feature interactive advertising for programming and additional Cablevision services, Ligos says.

According to Ligos, MediaRig Mosaic is a compact system that "replaces the stack of equipment that might otherwise be required to generate a single guide channel." The company says it is compatible with a wide range of EPG and middleware solutions, including Macrovision's i-Guide and Passport Interactive, Microsoft Foundation, SARA, MDN 3.0 and ETV/EBIF. "This roll-out represents the latest of many successes for our Mosaic within the Latin American cable market alone," Ligos CEO, Mark Koziol, said in a prepared statement. "We couldn't be more pleased to see an industry leader such as Cablevision in Mexico City really push the concept with such an innovative approach. Over the past year we've found great interest from multichannel operators worldwide in rolling out these new interfaces, and I think they're pleasantly surprised by both MediaRig Mosaic's capabilities and how easily it has integrated into their existing infrastructure."

In other Ligos news: The company has appointed John Dixon as VP of sales. According to the company, Dixon has 20 years of sales and relationship management experience, with key expertise in digital TV headend systems, interactive TV middleware, and telco network technologies. He will be tasked with leading the company's efforts to expand the marketshare for the MediaRig Mosaic system, which is its flagship product and which it claims is the most widely deployed video-rich navigation system of its kind. "Despite the current environment, our business in this area has expanded rapidly over the past year," Ligos CEO, Koziol, said in a prepared statement. "John's depth of knowledge and reputation in this industry are exactly what we need to meet this growing demand, both here in the US and for new multichannel opportunities internationally."

Dixon was previously in charge of sales and business development at Digital Multimedia Technologies in Los Altos, Calif. Prior to that, he headed up the first US subsidiary of OCAP middleware provider, Osmosys. He also founded Video Solutions, served as executive sales director at OpenTV, and was Asia/Pacific and North American sales director at DiviCom (now Harmonic). He served in both the US Air Force and the Air National Guard, leaving with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He holds an MBA from Dartmouth College and a BS from Kansas State University.