ICTV-YooMedia Joint Venture to Begin ITV Trials on ntl

BroadbandTV Group, a joint venture between UK-based YooMedia and US-based ICTV that was set up last fall (see [itvt] Issue 5.68 Part 1), says that, following successful joint lab testing, UK cable operator, ntl, will begin live trials of interactive TV programming based on ICTV’s HeadendWare platform in selected digital cable households in the fourth quarter. The HeadendWare platform is designed to overcome the limitations of the low-resource set-top boxes which have been widely deployed by cable operators in the US and elsewhere and which are unlikely to be replaced anytime soon. It pushes complex, IP-based ITV applications, encoded as MPEG-2 streams, from the headend to thin-client set-top boxes, and allows those apps to utilize a variety of Internet technologies, including HTML, JavaScript, Java, Windows Media Player, Flash, RealPlayer and Quicktime. The trial deployment with ntl will see HeadendWare enabling the delivery of Web-based interactive programming on the cable operator’s existing set-tops.

BroadbandTV Group says that it has developed and aggregated a range of interactive programming for the trials, including news, entertainment, games and lifestyle programming. In order to do so, it has established a content partner program that will allow it to offer ntl customers programming from ITN, MTV Networks, Emap, Turner Broadcasting, Sesame Workshop, UKTV and other high-profile programmers. "A huge amount of work has been undertaken with ntl in the last year in order to integrate the BroadbandTV technology with their infrastructure and various set-top boxes," YooMedia group managing director, Neil MacDonald, said in a prepared statement. "We are delighted to be entering into consumer-facing trials with such a strong line-up of programming content."

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