--Mixed Signals Recently Announced Addition of EBIF Monitoring Capabilities to its Sentry Product
Tektronix, a supplier of test, measurement and monitoring solutions, said Monday that it has acquired Mixed Signals. Details of the transaction have not been disclosed. "The acquisition of Mixed Signals, Inc. brings to Tektronix a strong team that has delivered leading innovation to the video monitoring market," Eben Jenkins, general manager of the Tektronix Video Business, said in a prepared statement. "The combination of Mixed Signals and Tektronix accelerates our ability to provide unmatched next-generation video test and monitoring solutions to our customers."
Mixed Signals offers a range of digital content monitoring solutions (which it bills as providing visibility into video streams and digital services delivery in real time), including solutions for monitoring transport streams, switched digital video, ad insertion and interactive TV content. Earlier this month (see the article published on itvt.com, May 5th), it announced the addition of new capabilities to its Sentry product which it said would enable it to monitor interactive TV applications--including advanced advertising apps--based on the EBIF spec. "For EBIF-based applications to work properly, triggers must be embedded into program streams and when these triggers are activated (by viewers) the additional data must be delivered to set-top boxes," the company explained in a press release. "Determining if all these steps are performed correctly across an entire channel line-up is not possible by simply measuring packet loss alone or using other first generation approaches for ensuring quality of experience (QoE). Sentry's advanced detection capabilities, coupled with its constant 24×7 operation and scalability to simultaneously monitor hundreds of programs, ads and EBIF widgets, make it the ideal solution for the performance monitoring of EBIF-based applications."
