Tele Columbus and PrimaCom Choose NDS MediaHighway®

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
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  • Leading German cable operators Tele Columbus and PrimaCom select NDS MediaHighway® advanced middleware solution
  • MediaHighway to support Tele Columbus and PrimaCom to centrally manage their set-top box (STB) population across different networks and headends located all over Germany
  • MediaHighway enables Tele Columbus and PrimaCom to introduce new value-added services such as Digital Video Recorder (DVR) functionality and Video on Demand (VOD)
  • New agreement underscores MediaHighway’s position as pre-eminent middleware in German pay-TV

LONDON, UK — NDS Group, the leading provider of technology solutions for digital pay-TV, today announced that Tele Columbus and PrimaCom, together forming Germany’s third-largest cable operator, have selected NDS’ advanced MediaHighway® middleware solution to power their pay-TV business, further reinforcing MediaHighway’s leadership in the German pay-TV industry.

In 2008, Tele Columbus and PrimaCom introduced market-leading VideoGuard® content protection technology from NDS. All of the VideoGuard-equipped set-top boxes (STBs) of the two partner companies will also feature MediaHighway. The Group serves some 3.5 million cable-connected households and operates a large number of independent networks.

NDS MediaHighway is an open middleware infrastructure, enabling efficient centralised management of Tele Columbus’ and PrimaCom’s STB populations across all independent networks and headends. The two cable operators can now further strengthen their unified brand because MediaHighway enables the user interface and on-screen design to have a common look and feel across all current and future STBs, harmonising the overall TV experience for subscribers. Other benefits include enhanced efficiency for STB maintenance and customer care operations.

Additionally, thanks to MediaHighway, Tele Columbus and PrimaCom have the ability to flexibly introduce new and advanced TV services such as DVR functionality, Push VOD, VOD, a broad range of interactive applications such as TV games and many more service extensions. Third-party applications which can run on MediaHighway’s open software architecture can also be included in Tele Columbus’ and PrimaCom’s service offering. The NDS solution gives the two cable providers the ability to swiftly launch integrated service enhancements identically over all existing and future STBs in a single roll-out operation.

Markus Schmid, CEO of Tele Columbus and PrimaCom, explained: “Following our choice of NDS VideoGuard, we now have also selected its MediaHighway middleware in order to benefit from an end-to-end solution with NDS as one of our main technology partners. NDS middleware offers many advantages to us, fulfilling the core requirement for centralised and efficient management of our STB population, currently being deployed in many independent networks which have widely varying headend technology. Based on these two world market-leading solutions from NDS, we look forward to introducing the next generation of digital services to enhance the TV experience for our subscribers – and provide a best-in-class technology infrastructure for our content and programming partners.”

Yves Padrines, Vice President, Business Development at NDS and General Manager NDS GmbH, said: “We are proud to announce that with Tele Columbus and PrimaCom, one of the leading cable groups in the German market has decided to select MediaHighway middleware to enhance their businesses and we look forward to supporting the Group in its upcoming initiatives.” He continued: “This announcement further strengthens the position of NDS and MediaHighway in the German market. We are gratified that Germany’s pay-TV innovators have entrusted NDS technology to help them deliver a superior viewing experience to their audiences.”