SOUTHAMPTON, U.K. — TANDBERG Television, part of the Ericsson Group (NASDAQ:ERIC), today announced that COMSTAR-Direct, Russia’s leading provider of broadband Internet access services (trademark STREAM) and a member of COMSTAR-UTS Group Telesystems (LLC COMSTAR-UTS, LSE: CMST), is expanding its IPTV head-end to support MPEG-4 AVC encoding and transcoding. The Moscow-based ISP is a long-standing customer of TANDBERG Television’s MPEG-2 encoders for its standard definition television service.

The upgrade means COMSTAR-Direct can benefit from the higher bandwidth efficiencies of MPEG-4 AVC encoding, which is ideally suited for video over DSL networks. The addition of TANDBERG Television’s single module iPlex transcoding means the operator can ingest widely available MPEG-2 ... Read more

HERZLIYA, Israel — Optibase Ltd. (NASDAQ:OBAS) (the “Company” or Optibase”), a leader in advanced digital video solutions today announced that its board of directors resolved on June 25, 2008 to delist the Company’s ordinary shares from trading on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (”TASE”). Accordingly, the Company requested the TASE to delist its ordinary shares from trading on the TASE. Under applicable Israeli law, the delisting of the Company’s ordinary shares from trading on the TASE will become effective within at least three months from the date hereof, during such time the Company’s ordinary shares will continue to trade on the TASE. The Company will announce the exact date for delisting following the TASE’s decision on the Comp... Read more

NETANYA, Israel — IPTV subscriber numbers are growing steadily, but widespread uptake of services is yet to reach its full promise. As telcos, service providers and content and technology vendors prepare to gather in Amsterdam for one of the industry’s larger events, BitBand refutes some of the most prevalent myths that deter potential players from entering this booming market.

IPTV Myth 1: Content is hard to get. Without premium content, my service will not sell.

Content offering is an important differentiator, and service providers are required to make huge volumes of content accessible, while employing intuitive and simple access methods. As IPTV technology supports a personalized and tailored user experience, service providers do not have to rely solely on premium... Read more

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — Envivio, the leading provider of IP video convergence encoding solutions from mobile to HD, today announced it has closed $25 million in new venture capital funding. This significant investment follows a period of exceptional growth at Envivio, averaging above 55% annually for the past five years, driven by major customer deployments for contribution and distribution applications in the Mobile TV, Internet TV and IPTV markets. Envivio has also completed the expansion of its senior management team with the appointments of John McAdoo as Chief Financial Officer and Richard Stanfield as Chief Operating Officer.

Envivio CEO Julien Signes said, “Envivio has firmly established itself as a leading provider of video convergence solutions, enabling o... Read more

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. — Mindspeed Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:MSPD), a leading supplier of semiconductor solutions for network infrastructure applications, today announced that QuStream, a producer of advanced systems for multi-format routing, optical transport, signal processing and distribution, has chosen Mindspeed’s broadcast video crosspoint switches and 3G/HD/SD broadcast video SDI chipset for its flagship Cheetah video matrix routers.

“We chose Mindspeed’s crosspoint switches and broadcast video chipset for our next-generation routers because they offer robust performance and design flexibility combined with very low power dissipation,” said Steve Miller, vice president of Product Development with QuStream. “These components give us the power to process and rou... Read more

LAS VEGAS — Harmonic Inc. (NASDAQ:HLIT - News) today announced that Television New Zealand (TVNZ) has deployed the market-leading DiviCom® Electra® 7000 high definition (HD) and Electra 5400 standard definition (SD) MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) encoders for the new Freeview digital terrestrial television (DTT) service launched this week. The new service is New Zealand’s first HD digital service, and is currently available to approximately 75 percent of homes nationwide. TVNZ selected the Harmonic compression solutions because of the Electra platform’s superior video quality at ultra-low bit-rates. Harmonic’s Electra 1000 MPEG-2 SD encoder is also utilized by TVNZ for its digital satellite pay TV service, launched in May 2007.

The Freeview service is one of the world’s first li... Read more

AMSTERDAM — Harmonic Inc. (NASDAQ: HLIT) today announced that its Rhozet™ media transcoding technology has been selected by Flow Works for integration with its Flow Center digital asset management and distribution system. The Flow Works Flow Center and Rhozet Carbon Coder solution is deployed at MTV Germany to provide digital archiving, integrated workflow management and multi-channel distribution to its internal production staff, as well as third-party partners.

At MTV Germany Carbon Coder is used directly within the Flow Center workflow to deliver hundreds of hours of video-on-demand and download-to-own content. This integrated solution accelerates the workflow for the MTV Germany production team with improvements such as fully automated upload, easy access to complete arc... Read more

HONG KONG — Digital Rapids has been chosen by China Central Television’s CCTV.com to provide encoding, streaming and management systems to power live streaming of the 2008 Olympic Games to Internet audiences in China. The announcement was made today by Digital Rapids and CCTV.com.

CCTV.com is the official Internet and mobile phone broadcaster of the Beijing Olympics. 100 of Digital Rapids’ DRC-Stream encoding and streaming solutions will be used to capture and encode video feeds of the Olympics into live web streams for the CCTV.com web site and partner Internet operators, enabling high-quality and reliable web viewing experiences. The enterprise-class Digital Rapids Broadcast Manager live encoder management software will be used for centralized management, monitoring ... Read more

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO — Envivio, the leading technology provider of IP video convergence encoding solutions from mobile to HD, today announced that the new media platform of China’s largest television network, China Central Television (CCTV), has launched its IPTV service pilot in Beijing in time for the start of the Olympic Games using 80 Envivio 4Caster encoders. CCTV is one of the companies licensed to provide IPTV services in China and is the official Internet and Mobile Broadcaster for the 2008 Olympic Games. Envivio is a strategic partner to CCTV.com for the broadcast of the Games.

“This is an exciting year for broadcasting in China as local audience interest in the Olympic games is at an unprecedented level.” said Mr. WANG Wenbin, President of CCTV.com. ... Read more

HONG KONG — TANDBERG Television, part of the Ericsson Group (NASDAQ:ERIC), today announced that it is upgrading the satellite head-end system of Korea Digital Satellite Broadcasting Co. Ltd., more universally recognized under its ‘SkyLife’ brand name. The enhanced MPEG-4 AVC system will allow SkyLife to expand its high definition (HD) TV services. As Korea’s only satellite broadcast operator, SkyLife is at the forefront of the country’s television landscape and is aiming to offer more channels and continue its improvement of advanced services to its subscribers. Following a review of its existing video head-end system, SkyLife selected TANDBERG Television’s advanced solutions because they meet the operator’s needs today, and provide a flexible platform for the future.