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Tag: NDS Group

  • Richard Yanowitch appointed vice chairman of NDS Group

    MUMBAI: NDS Group plc has appointed Richard Yanowitch as a non-executive director and vice chairman of the NDS Board.
    Yanowitch, a consultant to News Corporation, will advise NDS on the expansion of its US operations and the development of strategic partnerships.
    He is the founder of The Entrepreneurs Group, a private firm that advises companies on business strategy, and technology innovation in the Internet era.
    Previously Yanowitch served for five years as executive vice president of Verisign Inc. And, earlier he spent six years at Sybase Inc, as vice president corporate marketing.
    NDS Group plc chairman and CEO Dr Abe Peled said, “We welcome Richard to the NDS Board and we are confident that he will contribute greatly to the development and growth of NDS as we continue to focus on the leading solutions for the secure distribution of entertainment and information.”
    NDS Group plc, a News Corporation company, is a supplier of open end-to-end digital pay TV solutions for the secure delivery of entertainment and information to television set-top boxes and IP devices.

  • Tata Sky ties-up with NDS Systems to create interactive service

    Tata Sky ties-up with NDS Systems to create interactive service

    MUMBAI: Tata-Sky has teamed up with NDS Group Plc in order to deploy NDS solutions to support and provide range of digital and interactive TV services, ahead of launch, which is slated in the mid-2006.

     

    Tata-Sky is aiming to offer a superior television viewing experience to its subscribers.

     
    NDS systems will play a key role in the end-to-end system architecture and launching the nationwide digital service. The NDS VideoGuard conditional access solution provides superior broadcast security, and enables Tata Sky to offer multiple programming and pricing packages. NDS is working with Tata Sky to build a world-class broadcast infrastructure, states an official release. 

     

    NDS’s MediaHighway middleware and Value TV interactive infrastructure will enable Tata Sky to offer interactive services to subscribers. NDS engineers in Bangalore will be key in the design, delivery and service support of the end-to-end solution.

     

    The service will enhance the choice for viewers looking for the best of pay television services in the country. Tata Sky states that the platform will offer its subscribers a wide array of programming choices with interactive features and superior picture and sound quality. 

     

    Tata Sky Ltd CEO Vikram Kaushik said, “We are committed to building a state-of-the-art DTH operation in India for which we have selected NDS to provide end-to-end solutions. This will enable us to transfer control and choice into the hands of subscribers”.

     

    NDS Asia Pacific VP and GM Sue Taylor said, “We are delighted to be selected by Tata Sky. This is an endorsement of the NDS position as the leader in conditional access systems. As systems integrator, NDS is uniquely capable of delivering the complex platform in the aggressive timescale set by Tata Sky.”

     

    The digital technology of Tata Sky DTH service will eliminate many recurrent problems that consumers face while watching television in India. The DTH satellite signal is always on and will eliminate instances of service downtime caused by power cuts and cable cutting. The Tata Sky service will have fixed channel positions and pre-tuned audio levels, informs the official release.

  • Judge sets discovery period in Canal Plus vs NDS case

    The battle being played out by media giants Vivendi Universal and News Corp through their respective television security units in a district court in San Francisco has entered a critical juncture. At issue is a $ 1 billion piracy suit filed last month by Vivendi’s Canal Plus alleging that engineers at NDS Group broke Canal Plus’ security systems for its digital pay-television service and made the codes available on the Web for free. NDS is 80 per cent owned by News Corp.

    Both sides said the judge had agreed to an accelerated discovery period, and that their lawyers will immediately begin working out a schedule for each to review the other’s documents and other relevant materials.

    They said their lawyers would report back to the judge on any difficulties, and the judge would arbitrate the disputes.

    Canal Plus’ suit asks for damages of $1 billion, the amount it alleges it has lost from the supposed piracy. Both NDS and Canal Plus’ Canal Plus Technologies unit make “conditional access” systems that allow digital television providers to restrict, usually through a special card that plugs into the set-top box, what programs a customer receives.

    Last week, Canal Plus filed an affidavit with the court from an engineer whose consulting firm is partly owned by NDS and who claims to have exact details on how NDS allegedly pirated Canal Plus’s codes.

    In an official release, NDS said “the judge approved NDS’s suggestion that the parties work out a comprehensive discovery plan.”

    ” As NDS explained to the judge, NDS intends to show that Canal+’s claims have no basis and needs discovery from Canal+, in part to determine whether Canal+ is improperly using NDS technology. NDS and Canal+ were instructed to work out a discovery plan and report to the court if they are unable to agree,” the statement says.

  • Nickelodeon goes interactive with kids in the UK

    Nickelodeon goes interactive with kids in the UK

    Nickelodeon may not be a “happening” channel in India in but that is not the case everywhere. The Viacom-owned kids channel is currently running a new interactive initiative in the UK that lets viewers choose their viewing schedule via their remote control and pick the programmes they want to watch for a whole week by voting for their favorite show and then seeing it half an hour later. The initiative went into play yesterday and will run for a week.

    Using an application developed by NDS Group (a News Corporation company) as part of Nickelodeon’s successful “Watch Your Own Week” event, Nickelodeon will let its viewers vote interactively for the schedule, an NDS release says.

    Viewers will be presented with three of their favourite programmes every half an hour from 8 am until 8 pm and encouraged to choose between them by presenters. Votes will be cast using the interactive application, via the BSkyB platform, which will determine what is shown next on the channel. Kids can also enter in a competition to win one of the following prizes: Playstation 2, Sony personal recordable minidisc player or a Palm Pilot personal organiser by submitting their telephone number.

    Each new selection of programmes will see a fresh round of voting and Nickelodeon viewers can choose to enter a prize draw after their choice is made. Cost warnings will appear on-screen, while security systems shall ensure that only one vote is possible per session.

    Kids can also vote online at www.nick.co.uk or via the telephone. Nickelodeon anticipates that over a quarter of a million votes will be received via the NDS Value@TV application during the half term special, in addition to those collected via telephone, internet and SMS. Kids are the ultimate early adopters of new technology and iTV provides a new means of connecting with them.

    Nickelodeon can increase viewer retention through this innovative interactive content, which, ultimately, will result in increased revenue.

  • Bitstream, NDS sign deal for first satellite TV platform in Korea

    Bitstream, NDS sign deal for first satellite TV platform in Korea

    Bitstream Inc. and NDS Group plc have have entered into a long-term, large volume contract to license Bitstream’s Korean stroke-based font for use in NDS’ digital broadcasting systems deployed by SkyLife in Korea.

     

    SkyLife is the first and exclusive satellite broadcaster in Korea, and hopes to reach 3 million pay-TV subscribers by 2005.

    The first set-top box vendors have been selected by SkyLife, and integration of Bitstream fonts and NDS middleware and conditional access systems is ongoing. Humax Co. Ltd., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., and Hyundai Digital Technology Co. Ltd. are all committed to delivery of digital set-top boxes to SkyLife by the end of the year, a joint release says.

     

    “We are excited to expand our long-term relationship with NDS and to offer a high-quality Korean font to SkyLife,” said Anna Chagnon, President of Bitstream yesterday. “This is a tremendous opportunity for Bitstream. With its small footprint and fast rendering speed, including the fastest TrueType rasterizer on the market, Font Fusion and stroke-based fonts are ideal for digital broadcasting systems, where quality text rendering on screen is of critical importance. We are excited by SkyLife’s endorsement of our stroke-based font as the standard for digital satellite broadcasting in Korea.”

     

    Sue Taylor, Vice President and General Manager, NDS Asia Pacific, said, “The combined strengths of Bitstream and NDS are a proven solution. In China, we have shown that our combined solution reduces the hardware requirements of the set-top box, consequently reducing the overall cost of the set-top box.”

     

    NDS will supply the Open VideoGuard conditional access system, NDS Core middleware, StreamServer for the management control of the digital headend, and provide consultancy for set-top box integration.

     

    NDS and SkyLife will work with Korean set-top box manufacturers to incorporate Bitstream’s Korean stroke-based font into their solutions. NDS licensed Font Fusion from Bitstream to use as NDS’ font rendering technology for rendering high-quality Korean characters on the fly.

     

    Bitstream’s stroke-based fonts are extremely compact, high-quality Asian fonts for embedded systems. These fonts enable developers to keep storage and memory requirements to a minimum. For example, a Korean font in this format includes over 17,000 characters in less than 400 KB. Developers do not have to dedicate a large amount of ROM space to store a stroke-based font, nor do they have to use a lot of memory to display it.

     

    Many developers, including ANT, Liberate, NDS, Quadriga, and Samsung, are using Bitstream’s font technology to build cable, satellite, and home entertainment systems for digital television.

     

    Font Fusion provides developers with full font fidelity and high-quality typographic output at any resolution on any device, while maintaining the integrity of the original character shapes. Font Fusion is small and fast. Most developers can compile the source code in 32-105 KB, depending on options. It generates more than 16,000 characters per second, using the Arial font at 25 lines per em on a 233MHz Pentium(r) II processor, cache turned off.

     

    Font Fusion performs well in memory- and performance-constrained environments. For example, a complete traditional Chinese TrueType font with over 13,000 characters can occupy as much as 8MB. With Font Fusion, the same characters occupy less than 0.5MB, representing considerable savings in memory and disk space costs.

     

    Font Fusion is designed for operating systems, software applications, Web applications, low-resolution screen devices, multimedia servers, high-definition television screens (HDTVs), set-top boxes, continuous tone printers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and other embedded systems and information and wireless appliances.

  • NDS hires India operations chief

    NDS hires India operations chief

    News Corp company, NDS Group, a provider of conditional access systems and interactive applications for digital TV, has hired former Star India internet operations CEO, Lalit Ahuja, as Managing Director NDS India, to head up its new research and development center based in Bangalore.

    Ahuja has more than 20 years of engineering software and commercial experience and his charge will be focusing on developing interactive TV applications and broadband technologies in conjunction with NDS R & D centers in Israel, China and the UK. He will also have to develop the India operations as a global hub for NDS R&D. In addition he will also develop markets for NDS’s interactive applications, working closely with NDS sales and marketing executives to develop and implement the strategic business initiatives for expanding regional markets.

    Ahuja will report to Dr Jasjit Saini, Vice President, Consumer Devices, NDS Group plc. Says Saini: “As NDS continues to drive the development and adoption of interactive television across the world it is critical that it maintains its lead in the field of R & D. Lalit Ahuja’s tremendous experience in software development and his extensive business acumen makes him an ideal executive to help us maintain this lead.”

    Ahuja has worked as Country Head (India), president and managing director of LG Soft India. Prior to that he was with software firm Datamatics. He started his career in the Indian Navy retiring as a Lieutenant Commander.

  • Korea Digital Satellite Broadcasting selects NDS and Ssang Yong to launch satellite broadcasting

    Korea Digital Satellite Broadcasting selects NDS and Ssang Yong to launch satellite broadcasting

    The NDS Group, a News Corporation company and leading provider of conditional access systems and interactive applications for digital TV, announced recently it had been selected as part of the winning consortium to launch Korea’s first digital satellite broadcasting operation. The deal, worth approximately $30m to the consortium, is one of the largest ever of its kind in Asia and will provide the region’s first fully interactive satellite TV platform, a company release states.

    As part of the consortium led by Ssang Yong Information and Communications (SICC), NDS will supply their Open VideoGuard (conditional access system), StreamServer (for the management control of the digital headend) and provide support consultancy for Ssang Yong in their role as prime systems integrator. In addition to its work with Ssang Yong, NDS will work with Korean manufacturers to integrate interactive technology into set-top boxes and with content developers to make interactive services available to Korea Digital Satellite Broadcasting (KDB).

    “This agreement is yet another endorsement of NDS’s technology and systems integration skills,” said Dr Abe Peled, president and CEO, NDS Group. “NDS’s conditional access systems are used by the world’s largest broadcasting operations and we are one of the industry’s few providers with a full end-to-end solution. We are confident that our systems and support will meet KDB’s needs during the critical development period, at launch and as it grows its subscriber base over the coming years.”

    Highlights:
    * Korea Digital Satellite Broadcasting (KDB) to launch digital satellite broadcasting by end of 2001
    * NDS to act as consultant to Ssang Yong Information and Communications on systems integration
    * NDS Open VideoGuard(tm) digital conditional access and StreamServer( selected for use on KDB.