mirada demonstrates how operators can control branding on SmarDTV's CAMs

Thursday, November 19th, 2009
SmarDTV logo

mirada, the audiovisual interaction specialist, is today announcing that it has teamed up with SmarDTV (SWX:KUD.VX), a leading manufacturer of pay-TV technologies, to port Nagravision’s NAGRA media GUIDE, onto a SmarDTV CI Plus module.

The NAGRA media GUIDE is a fully integrated turnkey solution, which delivers an HD user experience enhanced with innovative features based on personalisation and recommendation. The partnership demonstrates for the first time that operators can integrate their own branded Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) onto a CI Plus module.

SmarDTV’s Conditional Access Modules (CAM) combined with an iDTV provide an attractive alternative to set-top boxes for accessing digital pay-TV because they only require one remote control, which offers much lower energy consumption and no extra cables. CI Plus technology offer the possibility to embed interactive application on a CAM, to be executed on an iDTV reproducing the brand image of the operator in a similar way set-top boxes do.

Once the CAM module is inserted in the TV set, the application, developed by mirada and stored on the CAM, takes control of the TV set so that users can benefit from the interface provided by the operator. Users will experience a more complete EPG that includes additional information on favourite TV programmes as well as functions that make contextual recommendations for different programmes, searches and purchasing options.

The CAM module with a branded EPG has been tested on models from major TV manufacturers such as Sony, Samsung and Philips, and demonstrated full interoperability.

Jose Luis Vazquez, CEO of mirada comments: “Partnering with a market leader such as SmarDTV has enabled mirada to further prove our own leading position in digital TV software and at the same time added a tenth middleware to our expertise (MHEG-5). Embedded software for CAMs is a new and promising market which mirada is exploring and already making its mark in.”

Eric Chaubert, CEO of SmarDTV says: “mirada’s impressive track record in interactivity speaks for itself and we are confident that this new partnership will be a boost to our products and services.”