Thomson is delving into two new ventures in an effort to demonstrate that broadband ADSL telco technology represents a new growth opportunity for television broadcasters and other digital content providers.
Thomson announced its participation in two French ADSL demonstration projects, one launched by the TF1 group and the other by Monaco Telecom.
The TF1 group project, called "Dream TV," encompasses 200 households located in Boulogne Billancourt (France) and in the 15th arrondissement of Paris. Each home can receive an array of 24 TV channels over an ADSL network.
Thomson is providing an integrated equipment system to the TF1 group that includes MPEG-2 encoders developed by Nextream, and its own ADSL set-top boxes. Thomson said the architecture of this pre-deployment guarantees the quality of service required for broadcast programming and will subsequently enable the delivery of services such as video-on-demand (VOD) and digital networked PVRs (Personal Video Recorders).
In another project developed jointly with Alcatel, and managed by Monaco Telecom, the possibilities for delivering new interactive services over ADSL will be demonstrated in Monaco. In this project, 300 homes will be able to receive VOD services, giving them access to a library of movies via their TV sets for an initial six-month period. This new service enables telecommunications operators to extend their offerings beyond high-speed Internet to television viewers, a new category of consumers for telco companies.
Over the past two years, Thomson said ADSL networks have grown substantially due to the availability of bandwidth, while installation costs for ADSL infrastructure have rapidly declined.
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