Technicolor reaches 100 million digital set-top box milestone

Technicolor, formerly Thomson, a worldwide leader of services to content creators, has reached the milestone of delivering 100 million digital set-top boxes over multi networks since it entered the market in 1994.

Technicolor’s success is largely thanks to the contracts it has won with major clients in a global marketplace. In North America, Technicolor’s first digital satellite STB customer, DIRECTV remains a loyal customer today. In Latin America, Technicolor provides set-top boxes to key players including DIRECTV Latin America and Sky Brazil and Sky Mexico, while in Europe, it has nurtured relationships with leading names including UPC Broadband and News Corp. affiliates such as BSkyB, as well as HOT, in the Middle East, and Astro of Malaysia and Tata Sky in the Asia-Pacific.

For many of its global customers, Technicolor has established long-term relationships and garnered repeat business thanks to its ongoing product evolution for all technology platforms, including digital cable, satellite television, terrestrial broadcasting and IPTV.

For the full press release, click here.

Thomson takes a further leap forward with next generation interactive HD cable set-top boxes

Thomson, a worldwide leader of services to content creators, is demonstrating two new cable set-top boxes, based on its third generation technology and delivering high speed data as well as comprehensive digital cable services. The set-top boxes allow cable operators to offer broadband to the home at up to 100Mb/s with home networking and content sharing using the MoCA (Multimedia over Co-ax Alliance) standard.

The new DCI708 set-top box is ready for both standard and high definition television using MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 coding, including 1080 line progressive HD. It is based on a new system on a chip device, which incorporates full support for Docsis and EuroDocsis, including channel bonding to achieve internet access speeds of up to 100Mb/s. The DCI804 set-top box offers the same features and additionally includes an internal disk recorder, using fast and compact 2.5” disk drives for local recording, timeshifts and downloading data from the network operator.

The new boxes support multiple middleware and conditional access solutions. The integral high speed data connectivity gives the operator ready access for advanced interactive applications such as video on demand, and secure communications, as well as remote diagnostics and updates to minimise support costs. Where the home has existing co-ax cable connecting rooms, the implementation of MoCA allows a single set-top box to distribute content to multiple rooms within the home, allowing the users to take advantage of home networking.

For the full release, click here.

Thomson unveils simple and seamless video integration solution between IP networks and 3G mobile services

Thomson, a worldwide leader of services to content creators, has brought its experience to bear on the growing market for video communications and announces the launch of the new Cirpack 3G Video Calls Gateway. With the new product, it is now simple for operators to set up multimedia services – including calls, video blogging and even live television access – and allow 3G mobile and fixed IP devices to share video.

The Cirpack 3G Video Calls Gateway connects mobile networks and IP/IMS based networks by integrating the 3G video protocol (H.324m) with the SIP voice over IP protocol. It also provides the bi-directional transcoding to serve the codecs each device requires. As well as point to point calls, the Gateway also offers access to server-based functionality such as push video, video blogging and video mail. With the appropriate equipment, a subscriber could establish video surveillance at home or place of business and view it on a mobile phone.

One of the barriers to 3G mobile video has traditionally been the considerable connection delay when placing calls, due to the need to exchange a number of messages to establish parameters. The Cirpack 3G Video Calls Gateway solves this by implementing the Windowed Numbered Simple Retransmission Protocol, which bundles all signalling into a single batch and dramatically improving call set-up time.

The Cirpack 3G Video Calls Gateway is part of the pre-integrated Thomson VoIP solution and fully interoperable with Cirpack softswitches and media gateways. It runs on standard, off-the-shelf IT platforms with full redundancy for high availability while retaining the best price/performance ratio. It is simply scalable to very large numbers of simultaneous video calls by adding software licenses rather than costly hardware.

For more information, visit www.thomson.net.

Thomson Launches its Scientific Council

Thomson, worldwide leader of services to content creators, announced Wednesday the creation of its Scientific Council. Its purpose is to reinforce technology leadership and drive innovation in the design of future products and services. The Scientific Council will issue recommendations regarding the Group’s technology strategy and help optimize the research projects portfolio.

The Scientific Council operates under the authority of Vince Pizzica, Head of Thomson Strategy, Technology and Marketing. Its members have been selected among the top experts worldwide in Thomson’s areas of excellence:

>> Internet security: Vern Paxson, Associate Professor of Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley

>> Content coding and compression: Bernd Girod, Professor of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University

>> Internet architecture: Jim Kurose, Professor of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

>> Internet applications and content search: Serge Abiteboul, Senior researcher, Institut National de la Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA)

>> Security: David Naccache, Senior researcher, Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) and Professor of Computer Science, University of Paris II Pantheon-Assas

>> Content production: Jim Mainard, Head of Production Development, DreamWorks Animation

This initiative marks a new phase in Thomson’s recent refocus on key Media & Entertainment industry technologies through three strategic research programs: Intelligent Media, Media Production and Media Distribution.