IPTV Specialists, Amino and Minerva, Team on Whole-Home DVR Solution

At the NAB show in Las Vegas, Monday, IPTV set-top box vendor, Amino Communications, and IPTV middleware provider, Minerva Networks, unveiled a whole-home DVR solution. The solution consists of Amino's AmiNET530 DVR-equipped IP set-top box, integrated with Minerva's new whole-home DVR control module. The companies say that it will allow service providers to offer advanced DVR services throughout a subscriber's home, using a single DVR set-top box, and will allow end-users to independently play, pause, rewind and fast-forward programming stored on the DVR set-top from any TV in their home, via other set-tops (including boxes without a hard drive). "Operators want to use the in-home broadband network to offer new services without increasing their infrastructure cost," Minerva CEO, Mauro Bonomi, said in a prepared statement. "Amino and Minerva are demonstrating how to extend DVR functionality throughout the home without requiring additional set-top boxes with embedded storage, keeping costs low while enabling a better subscriber experience." The joint solution is being demo'd this week in Amino's NAB booth (#C2054).

In other recent news from Minerva Networks:
--In February, the company announced that it had extended its partnership agreement with Latens, under which the companies have been providing IPTV solutions to operators in North and South America, consisting of Minerva's iTV Manager middleware and Latens' conditional access technology. Under their renewed agreement, the companies also plan to collaborate on integrating their joint solution with set-top box and VOD platforms from major manufacturers. "The partnership between Latens and Minerva brings together and unifies two major parts of a traditionally fragmented solution," Philip Cardy, Latens' director of product marketing, said in a prepared statement. "Our continuing partnership allows telcos to deploy IPTV services quickly and with confidence, with the assurance of Latens' excellent customer service...By combining Minerva's middleware with our proven conditional access technology, we can continue to meet our goal to provide the most closely integrated CAS solution for Minerva's middleware product. The renewal of our partnership agreement with Minerva strengthens our commitment to the US market and will allow us to continue to grow and expand."
--In January, the company announced that it had added three new channel partners in Latin America: ITS (Costa Rica), LOOK (Dominican Republic) and Union Electrica. Minerva says that it is building a worldwide network of qualified system integrators that can enable operators to deploy IPTV services using its own technologies in conjunction with components from its certified "ecosystem partners."