Nagravision and Deutsche Telekom to Bring Tvister Recommendation Service to TV Screens

CHESEAUX, Switzerland and BERLIN, Germany — Nagravision, a Kudelski Group (SIX:KUD) company and the world’s leading independent provider of value-added content protection solutions, and Deutsche Telekom AG (Frankfurt: DTE)(NYSE:DT), one of the world’s leading integrated telecommunications companies, today announced they have partnered to port the tvister recommendation service to TV screens. The companies will jointly demonstrate Deutsche Telekom’s tvister service implemented in a widget at the IBC 2009 exhibition in Amsterdam, September 11 – 15, in the Nagravision booth 1.D69. Delivering personalized widget services to TV consumers increases the usage rate which translates into direct revenue, ads revenue, and cross selling opportunities for digital television service providers.

tvister is an intelligent TV program guide currently available on the internet that provides news about shows, stars, series or movies. Based on what the TV viewer is watching, and using an advanced algorithm, the tvister widget recommends programs available in the schedule. Program recommendations may include channels from pay TV, free TV, VOD catalogs, pay-per-view, etc. At the IBC, the tvister widget can be seen running through the NAGRA Media Widget platform on an OpenTV-enabled HD set-top box powered by OpenTV Core2™ middleware.

“Consumers of all ages are multi-tasking and seeking information about the programs they are watching, while they are watching them. The new tvister widget provides a wealth of information at a glance to both satisfy their curiosity and provide instant gratification,” said Christoph Schmidt, Senior Vice President Personal & Social-Networking Applications by Products & Innovations, Deutsche Telekom AG.

Deutsche Telekom developed the tvister application which is available as a public beta under http://www.tvister.de. The tvister widget uses electronic programming guide (EPG) data as well as other information available on internet. The service fulfils legal constraints in terms of EPG data usage. This first generation of recommendation widgets can be deployed quickly, without a complex backend infrastructure and does not require the user to login providing anonymous and purely content related recommendation services.

“Widgets bring manageable bits of the internet to consumers’ TV screens and through our NAGRA Media Widget platform we are providing an end-to-end tool chain for operators to seamlessly embed those widgets into their digital TV offer”, said Ivan Verbesselt, Senior Vice President Marketing at Nagravision. “Beyond an elegant way to componentize the user experience, operators can use widgets to increase brand awareness and loyalty by offering personalized experiences that keep subscribers satisfied and coming back for more.”

What is a widget?

A widget is a small, intuitive, easy-to-use software application that lets consumers play with graphics and information online. It creates a targeted and familiar environment with recommendation of relevant data for consumers making them more likely to return to a certain service of interest. Widgets can now also be integrated into the television experience to access internet-based content directly from the TV by leveraging the NAGRA Media Widget platform, a recent enrichment of Nagravision’s Federated Services Architecture.