Interactive television interface for Startz.
At NAB2005, SysMedia is demonstrating an end-to-end solution for the production and distribution of OCAP/ACAP/MHP-compliant interactive TV content and applications. In Europe, MHP has proved a popular solution for the delivery of interactive television over cable systems. OCAP/ACAP promises to offer similar capabilities to meet the needs of the US cable marketplace. iTV over cable provides the consumer with a range of information services and can also provide DVD-like menus for VOD services.
NAB sees SysMedia co-exhibiting on the DVB booth with integration partners Fraunhofer IMK, developers of the JAME MHP Application Framework, and Strategy & Technology (S&T) who offer DSMCC object carousels.
Late 2004 saw Starz Encore Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of Liberty Media and a provider of premium movie services in the United States, complete the first out-of-laboratory broadcast of an OCAP application from its uplink facility. This involved technology from SysMedia, Fraunhofer and S&T. This broadcast was then successfully downloaded by CableLabs, the non-profit research and development consortium of the US cable industry that is behind OCAP. This was the first time that an operator had embedded OCAP functionality within a broadcast in the US and was a major step forwards for the interactive TV industry in the US. OCAP is a middleware layer specification, based on MHP that has been developed by CableLabs to provide a platform-independent interactive TV framework.
For more information, visit www.sysmedia.com and www.s-and-t.com.
