Invitel Hungary Selects Espial MediaBase Servers for On-Demand Expansion

Espial, the Canadian digital TV software company which last year bought US IPTV and video-on-demand technology provider, Kasenna (note: the deal valued Kasenna, which had raised $90 million in funding since its launch in 2000, at around $6.5 million), said Tuesday that triple-play provider, Invitel Hungary (note: the latter, which was previously called Vivendi Telecom, claims to be Hungary's second-largest service provider), has successfully launched--and is now expanding--on-demand services using Espial MediaBase VOD servers. Espial acquired the MediaBase product line through the Kasenna purchase.

Invitel--which launched its TV service, InviTV, several months ago--is using the MediaBase servers to power VOD, network PVR and timeshift/catch-up/startover TV services. According to Espial, a single hardware and software infrastructure allows Invitel to reduce the number of hardware servers it needs, as well as storage and space requirements and costs. The system integrator for Invitel's MediaBase deployment was Espial regional partner, Smart Com. "As we begin to scale our InviTV subscribers, we're pleased to have chosen Espial MediaBase," Invitel's head of TV services, Aron Javomiczky, said in a prepared statement. "This platform meets our requirements for scalability, application performance and service continuity. As well, Espial MediaBase is a key ingredient in our service differentiation strategy--it allows us to offer a leading-edge number of timeshift-TV and network PVR channels. With this service mix, we're confident we can build InviTV into a premium brand in the marketplace." Added Robert Hopkins, Espial's VP of sales for the EMEA region: "We are very pleased to be part of this deployment with Invitel, even more so, to see the rapid growth in customer demand so early in their deployment. The Invitel success builds on our tradition of building lucrative on-demand services for our customers using Espial MediaBase. With network PVR and timeshift-TV support, operators can now offer an even richer set of services using a unified video network infrastructure. In addition to movies-on-demand, subscribers can access recordings of their favorite shows and also pause, rewind and fast-forward live, broadcast TV. As content owners come to recognize the benefits and security of nPVR, we expect to see increasing demand for network PVR and timeshift-TV services."