Avinity, Neotion Integrate Tech to Enable Advanced Interactive TV without STB's on CI+ TV Sets

At the ANGA Cable Show in Cologne, Monday, Dutch interactive TV platform vendor, Avinity Systems, and Neotion, a French company best known for its system-on-a-chip MPEG-4 solutions, announced that they have integrated technologies in order to enable advanced applications--such as VOD navigation, rich interactive ads and the ability to access Web video--on TV sets with Common Interface Plus (CI+) capability, without the need for a separate two-way set-top box. (Note: the CI+ standard, which was developed by the CI+ Forum, whose participants include such CE giants as Panasonic, Philips, Samsung and Sony, is billed as enabling the secure delivery of pay-TV services to digital TV receivers. According to the Forum, the enhanced security within the new CI+ specification allows smartcards and CAM's to be used with any set-top or IDTV that supports the standard, thus giving consumers a choice of receiver equipment. At last year's ANGA show, Ocean Blue Software and SmarDTV announced that they had developed the world's first CI+ application, paving the way, they claimed, for highly interactive applications to run inside conditional access modules on integrated digital television sets.)

Avinity offers a platform called RenderCast which it bills as enabling the delivery of rich interactive content from the Internet to television (note: US-based ActiveVideo Networks offers a similar capability). According to the company, the platform is network-based and streams the user interface, enabling interactive services and access to on-demand content over any network to any existing two-way set-top box or television. While traditional interactive TV applications have to be integrated into each individual operator network and platform, Avinity says, its platform allows applications to be deployed on network-based servers.

Its new partnership with Neotion sees Avinity integrating RenderCast with the latter's CI+ Hybrid IP modules, which Neotion bills as seamlessly bringing genuine two-way capabilities to legacy receivers and digital TV sets. According to the company, the modules, which of course also incorporate security features, allow operators to run their services, including two-way interactive television applications, on digital TV sets without requiring a set-top box. "This approach to application deployment greatly reduces cost and complexity of launching and managing rich media content for both content provider and operator," Avinity CEO, Ronald Brockmann, said in a prepared statement. "Deploying without a separate set-top box is more convenient for the consumer, less expensive for the operator, and now supports the same advanced on-demand and interactive services."