Amino in Personal Content Channels Deal with beeTV, JavaFX TV Deal with Sun

Cambridge, UK-based IPTV set-top box vendor, Amino Communications, and beeTV, a Milan-based company that offers a platform which it says allows viewers to choose the TV shows they want to watch by presenting them with a "Personal Content Channel" (note: the platform was unveiled in the US at the DEMOfall 08 conference in San Diego last September--see [itvt] Issue 8.06 Part 2A; for a detailed overview of the company, see the interview with its founder and chairman, Rodolfo Hecht, that was published on itvt.com, June 15th), announced Tuesday that they are partnering to develop a "recommendation-based personalized TV experience" on Amino's set-top boxes.

According to beeTV, its Personal Content Channel (PCC) technology, which resides on the set-top box, uses a set of proprietary contextual recommendation algorithms that identify each viewer's habits, taste, viewing history, personal viewing context and "up-to-date general trends." The technology gathers suitable recommendations from all content sources, the company says, including broadcast and pay-TV, VOD and PVR/catch-up and pushes them to each individual viewer as a personalized channel that leverages the richness and impact of television images. beeTV touts the solution as requiring no "catalog" textual description, no channel surfing and no red or green buttons. Offered on a white-label basis, the technology is billed as enabling operators to increase VOD consumption and to improve customer acquisition and retention. It also features various management tools that are intended to enable operators to initiate and manage content-marketing activities and proactively insert their business logic. In addition, beeTV claims, the solution maximizes brand extension across multiple platforms and creates potential revenue streams from targeted advertising, by gathering and utilizing valuable collected customer marketing data. "We are very excited to be working with Amino, whose name is known throughout the IPTV industry for quality, cutting-edge products and innovative solutions," beeTV CEO, Yoram Granit, said in a prepared statement. "We see tremendous opportunities in working across the entire range of Amino boxes and with different ecosystem partners." Added Kevin Lingley, Amino's head of solutions strategy: "The solution has real possibilities for the viewer and the service provider alike. This will revolutionize the way viewers consume content and we are always looking for ways the service provider can reduce churn and increase customer satisfaction."

In other Amino news: Sun Microsystems announced Tuesday that the company plans to offer the JavaFX TV platform in its next-generation IPTV set-top boxes, in order to help enable the creation of "rich and expressive" interactive content (note: content developers interested in authoring JavaFX applications can find information, samples and an SDK at javafx.com).

By embracing JavaFX TV, Sun says, Amino will enable third-party developers to create new content that combines the use of high-quality IP-delivered secure video with the capabilities of the JavaFX platform. Because JavaFX also supports browser, desktop and mobile, the company claims, content authors can take their applications beyond TV to target multiple screens and achieve broad consumer and market reach. "There is now a vast global market for developers and content authors who want to deploy rich, expressive applications, services and experiences across the screens of our lives," Eric Klein, Sun's VP of Java marketing, said in a prepared statement. "Amino is well-regarded for its innovation, independence and integration expertise in IPTV, and is a natural partner with whom to launch the JavaFX TV platform. JavaFX TV delivers a caliber of user experience that supports and will benefit from Amino's leadership in quality and innovation." Added Amino CTO, Dominique Le Foll: "JavaFX is a fantastic platform on which to develop community applications, and we can offer a fully safe environment that protects the core functions of the device without restricting the creativity of the application developer. For the first time, we are able to offer our customers the chance to take advantage of a fast-growing community of third-party application developers."

JavaFX TV, which extends the JavaFX platform's support for interactive content development to televisions and set-top boxes, is built on the same family of Java technologies as the Blu-ray disc standard BD-J, tru2way and various other global TV standards--which, Sun says, means that developers and content authors can leverage existing skills and tools. Sun has established a channel--the Java Store--for developers and ISV's to directly deploy JavaFX applications to what the company claims are hundreds of millions of Java technology users worldwide.