Advanced Digital Broadcast To Launch First MHP Cable Pay-TV Service With Swiss Teleclub

Advanced Digital Broadcast will supply DVB-C MHP decoders to pay-TV cable operator Teleclub AG of Switzerland, for market deployment by the end of 2002. The agreement also underlines growing market acceptance of ADBs MHP implementation, already successful in early MHP adopter countries such as Finland, where i-CAN boxes from ADB will be retailing this autumn.

Wednesday, September 9, 2002 -- Geneva: Advanced Digital Broadcast, a world leading vendor of cost-effective digital set-top boxes and their software, will supply DVB-C Multimedia Home Platform (MHP) decoders to pay-TV cable operator Teleclub AG of Switzerland, for market deployment by the end of 2002.This new agreement follows ADBs January 2002 appointment as sole supplier of 100,000 digital cable decoders for Teleclubs migration to its digital service aimed at over 2.5 million cable-connected homes. The agreement also underlines growing market acceptance of ADBs MHP implementation, which has been already successful in early MHP adopter countries such as Finland, where i-CAN boxes from ADB will be retailing this autumn. Targeted to DVB MHP 1.0.2 Enhanced and Interactive Broadcast profiles, and built on ADBs tradition of premium quality software and cost-effective hardware design, the decoder provides an open standard platform to Zurich-based Teleclub. It delivers a high speed, memory efficient and stable solution for MHP without an increase of cost over same-class set-top boxes equipped with proprietary Middleware. The decoder is based on STMicroelectronics OMEGA digital-TV processor, and has a memory footprint of 24MB DRAM and 4MB Flash. It also features embedded Nagravision conditional access, DVB-CI, Dolby Digital and an ADBs EPG application suite, to enable easy viewer access to Teleclub's 10 channels of premium German-Language Pay-TV content, including special events and films. Dr Willfried Heinzelmann, a member of the board of directors of Teleclub commented: We would like to set a reference in the Swiss market with the introduction of MHP, an open platform that is usable for all different content providers as well. ADBs MHP set-top box guarantees interoperability with the fulfillment of both DVB and SwissFun specifications, and the built-in DVB Common Interface ensures the reliable decoding of other encrypted programs". Thomas Muehlethaler, managing director of Adrenio GmbH, which has the responsibility for system integration, said: The MHP implementation from ADB is the best one available today in the market in terms of technical design, reliability and performance. And by making the technology affordable ADB is demonstrating that MHP is a good solution for premium pay-TV".ADBs Rick Smith, VP EMEA Sales said: By choosing open standard technology from DVB, Teleclub will benefit from a broad range of interoperable equipment and services from different vendors. ADB is proud to provide Teleclub with leading edge set-top box technology that enables their business plans and legitimate aspirations".