Amino in IPTV Deals with ZTE, Tripleplay, SmartLabs, Mirifice

Cambridge, UK-based IPTV set-top box vendor, Amino Communications, made a number of announcements in the run-up to last month's IPTV World Forum conference in London:
--The company said that it has signed a global co-operation agreement with ZTE, a Chinese provider of telecom/network equipment and systems integration services. ZTE claims to have over 20 IPTV deployments around the world, consisting of over a million active set-top boxes and more than 1.5 million user licenses. Its IPTV customers include Indian state-owned telco, BSNL, and Hong Kong-based telco, PCCW. The deal calls for Amino to provide ZTE with the full range of its flagship AmiNET set-top boxes (including HDTV-enabled models), which the Chinese company will incorporate into its end-to-end IPTV solution. "ZTE is a world-leading equipment provider and systems integrator and we are delighted to partner with them in delivering future customers with a complete IPTV solution," Amino CEO, Andrew Burke, said in a prepared statement. "This important agreement further strengthens our position in the market and our relationship with major global players."
--The company said that it has teamed with IPTV software developer, Tripleplay Services, on a fully integrated application suite that provides IPTV, VOD and digital signage capabilities on a single hardware platform. The deal sees Amino's AmiNET130 HD set-top box integrated with Tripleplay's IP applications for the hospitality and educational sectors. "This innovative and exciting strategy will save the customer money by reducing the hardware they need to purchase, reduce integration issues and ongoing maintenance," Tripleplay CEO, Steve Rickless, said in a prepared statement. "Customers are provided with a future-proofed platform that can easily be expanded as new features are added. Using a standard HP server, this solution means customers do not need to worry about hardware and software issues and can focus on running their business and servicing their end customers."
--The company said that it has teamed with SmartLabs (offers service delivery platforms for interactive TV and client applications and user interfaces for set-top boxes) on an integrated solution that will allow IPTV operators to offer new over-the-top Internet video services to their subscribers. The solution sees Amino's entire range of AmiNET IP set-top boxes integrated with SmartLabs' SmartBRIDGE platform. The latter is an x86-based software gateway for encoding and streaming Internet-based video content to IP set-top boxes. According to SmartLabs, it allows IPTV subscribers to search for Internet video through the IP set-top user interface: when a subscriber selects a video s/he wants to watch, the company says, the SmartBRIDGE gateway requests the corresponding video file from the online content provider, converts it, and streams it to the subscriber's set-top box. SmartLabs claims that the user experience of searching for and viewing Internet video through the SmartBRIDGE gateway is similar to the experience provided by a standard VOD service. "By integrating with AmiNET set-top boxes, SmartLabs is giving consumers access to a wealth of popular OTT content such as YouTube and catch-up TV on their televisions," Roy Kirsopp, Amino's SVP of sales, said in a prepared statement. "This solution keeps Amino at the forefront of current Internet video trends and gives our customers a great advantage on selecting Amino." Added SmartLabs CEO, Mikhail Grachev: "With a SmartLabs-Amino joint solution, IPTV service providers have an integrated platform to deliver popular Internet-based content to IPTV set-top boxes. It will allow service providers to develop a STB-centric model which allows subscribers to get more and more services from and through IPTV."
--The company said that it has purchased the MiriATE testing solution from Mirifice, and that it plans to integrate it into its existing testing facilities. According to the company, the MiriATE solution will enable it to automatically put large numbers of set-top boxes through suites of stringent tests, including realistic endurance testing. Mirifice bills MiriATE as offering a range of advanced features, including video analysis, motion detection, region comparison and optical character recognition; it claims that these are critical in automating the majority of tests, as they remove the need for manual recognition and verification. Additional benefits claimed by Mirifice for MiriATE include multiple concurrency, and test scheduling on a platform that offers 24/7 availability. "Our MiriATE product is also used by network operators for acceptance and regression testing of set-top boxes and services," Mirifice founder and director, Niall Buckingham, said in a prepared statement. "The resulting improvement in set-top box and network service reliability reduces the total cost of ownership for the operator." According to Mirifice, deployment of MiriATE starts off with a 16 set-top box solution, which can then be increased in increments of 16 to very large systems of 384 boxes or more.

In February, Amino announced that it had sold its 2 millionth AmiNET set-top box. The company said the milestone was actually achieved in December, when it shipped an AmiNET product to a Russian distributor. It claims to have deployments in over 80 countries.