Amino's AssetHouse Partners with 180Squared, Sun Microsystems

Cambridge, UK-based IPTV set-top box vendor, Amino Communications, said Thursday that AssetHouse, the digital proposition management company that it acquired last June (see [itvt] Issue 7.87 Part 1), has formed a new partnership with 180Squared, a company which specializes in software and integration services for Microsoft's Mediaroom IPTV platform (and which earlier this week launched "Mediaroom in a Box," a Mediaroom solution geared towards smaller carriers--see the article published on itvt.com, April 15th).

The companies say that their partnership sees them working to deliver an end-to-end, cross-platform solution that will allow producers, network operators and content owners to use a "truly revolutionary method to merge their diverse content and marketing requirements into Microsoft Mediaroom." "The 180Squared Framework acts like the glue that connects multiple third-party systems into Mediaroom," Amir Littman, 180Squared's founder and VP of business development, said in a prepared statement. "Our company has been solely focused on empowering both customers and third-party developers to expand their interaction into Mediaroom by providing a robust and extensible backend development platform. We're proud to be working with AssetHouse to bring new functionality to Mediaroom by providing truly amazing content integration. In a market where profit margins are thin, anything that you can do to help increase those margins can make a big difference." Added Sandip Sarda, AssetHouse's SVP of product strategy and business development: "With a scalable platform for merchandising content, AssetHouse manages the product lifecycle of digital products across all channels and devices. Working with 180Squared, we can eradicate the expense and time of building and maintaining bespoke integrations, and provide the ability to deliver compelling and profitable bundles and packages."

The companies say that 180Squared allows Mediaroom customers to take full advantage of AssetHouse's features, including enabling linear and on-demand content to co-exist in the EPG.

In other Amino Communications news from the past week:
--On Wednesday, the company announced a "collaboration" between AssetHouse and Sun Microsystems, which it says will result in a "groundbreaking...truly scalable" solution that will allow service providers to better capitalize content catalogs while "adding a new dimension to the personalized 'MyTV' experience and hugely extending their ability to target advertising to the end-consumer." According to Amino and Sun, the solution enables service providers to "refine their market propositions" because "different headends can have different content and advertising profiles." The solution allows entertainment content to be "bundled together, packaged with relevant advertising, targeted to consumer preference and streamed unicast to the device," the companies say. "We're very positive about our joint capability to really help customers get the most from digital commerce," Darrell Jordan-Smith, VP of global communications and media industry at Sun, said in a prepared statement. "AssetHouse's ability to manage the end-to-end lifecycle of digital products and to combine targeted content with targeted advertising fits well with our innovative server systems and responds ideally to what the marketplace is demanding." Added AssetHouse's Sandip Sarda: "The Sun Fire servers and storage systems from 1U to 14U and the Sun Streaming System provide tremendous scalability. Its ultra-low entry-point and ability to add massive storage and IO capacity means service providers can cost-effectively store their whole long tail of movie assets which AssetHouse can then monetize. Storing linear TV with VOD content enables us to cross-reference and cross-sell. Its phenomenal streaming capacity means that unicast becomes a reality, bringing the 'millions to one' nirvana one step closer."
--On Tuesday, the company announced a deal with Optibase that sees the latter's EZ TV system integrated with Amino AmiNET IPTV set-top boxes. With the newly enhanced EZ TV STB Module, the companies say, users can now access the system's live or on-demand content on standard- and high-definition TV's, in addition to PC's and Macs. Optibase bills the EZ TV system as an integrated video delivery portal that allows distribution of real-time and on-demand content over existing enterprise IP infrastructures; its EZ TV Player provides PC users with an enhanced, interactive Web-based viewing experience by supporting multi-format video feeds in a mosaic view of 1, 4, 9 or 16 simultaneous streams, the company says. According to Amino and Optibase, the integration of the EZ TV system with the AmiNET set-top box product line will allow end-users to access on their TV screen the entire live and on-demand video content line-up managed by EZ TV. With the EZ TV STB Module, the companies say, users can browse video content, choose channels, access information, control volume and recall channels--all using the Amino set-top box remote. The integration is also billed as including automatic database synchronization which ensures that the channel guide and content are constantly up to date. "With the integration of the Amino STB interface, EZ TV is the most comprehensive enterprise video portal available today," Optibase VP of marketing, Nir Shalev, said in a prepared statement. "Users can control the content either on HDTV screens or on their PC's and yet still maintain centralized management. Amino was the obvious partner choice for us. The AmiNET STB's are highly reliable products that provide our customers with comprehensive functionality, including full format support from MPEG-2 SD to H.264 HD."