NDS Provides End-to-End Solution, Professional Services for New Satellite TV Service, MYtv

Interactive TV and conditional access technology provider, NDS, said Monday that MYtv, a new hybrid satellite pay-TV service that is scheduled to launch in the Ukraine later this year, has selected NDS professional services and an end-to-end solution from the company to power that launch. Among other things, the deployment sees NDS powering what it claims is the first integrated DVR solution in the Ukraine.

According to NDS, its MediaHighway middleware will enable MYtv to launch advanced services such as interactive TV and pay-per-view. The company says it is also managing systems integration for the launch, including the deployment of its VideoGuard conditional access solution, its XTV DVR technology, and an NDS EPG. XTV will allow MYtv customers to record TV content while viewing another program, the company says, and pause, record, play back, rewind and fast-forward their recorded content. At launch, MYtv plans to offer a high-definition DVB-S2 XTV DVR, as well as an HD/SD zapper set-top box to receive both MYtv pay-TV packages and satellite-delivered free-to-air channels. "We aim to become the consumer's first choice in entertainment and information by using the best available TV technology to enhance the television viewing experience," MYtv general director, Albert Feldman, said in a prepared statement. "We chose to partner with NDS because NDS has the technology, experience and market understanding to help us reach our goal." Added NDS's regional director for central and eastern Europe, Jeremy Maddocks: "With the technology from NDS, MYtv will be able to offer advanced services and features, such as Ukraine's first integrated DVR, to entertain and engage audiences across the region."

In other NDS news: The company has provided some information on its activities at the recent CableLabs Advanced Advertising Interop (note: for more on the event, see the article published on itvt.com, November 18th). According to the company, it tested and demonstrated how its NDS Dynamic suite of advanced advertising solutions enables addressable EBIF-based interactive TV ads to be delivered to individual set-top boxes, executed and measured. It says that the demo illustrated how the NDS Dynamic ad engine supports SCTE-130-based set-top box-level addressability, EBIF-based interactive advertising applications and CableLabs Advanced Advertising 1.0-based measurement. Its partners for the demo included BlackArrow, which provided a campaign management solution; Sigma Systems, which provided an SCTE-130-compliant Subscriber Information Service (SIS) for subscriber addressability; Nielsen Claritas, which provided PRIZM data; and Zodiac, which provided the EBIF User Agent.

According to NDS, the NDS Dynamic approach to addressability that was showcased in the Interop demo is focused on a local ad engine which stores audience qualifier data in the set-top box. As a result, the company says, the set-top can interpret broadcast messages delivered to all boxes to make ad decisions appropriate for a specific box. This approach, NDS claims, greatly reduces the need for unique messaging and usage of out-of-band messages for every set-top while making addressable ad decisions. The company says that the NDS Dynamic system is integrated with the NDS ETV system to allow addressable interactivity, as well as with local splicing and "forced tuning" components which enable linear addressability.

The demo featured an addressable RFI use case in which two legacy set-tops in two different households presented different RFI overlays on top of the same linear ad. The end-to-end scenario included addressable profile creation on the set-top, campaign creation, RFI template production, ad delivery, execution and measurement. "NDS Dynamic leverages our vast experience in set-top technology and digital TV networks to bring a seamless advanced advertising functionality to a broad spectrum of customers," Jesper Knutsson, VP and general manager of sales for NDS Americas, said in a prepared statement. "Successfully integrated in other markets, the compatibility of NDS Dynamic with the latest US advanced advertising standards assures we can introduce it locally by working with our partners here in the US."