Neotion TNT France shall finally introduce its breakthrough DTT Pay TV offer by December 2007

The NTF company (Neotion TNT France), duly registered by the CSA Regulator as official DTT Pay TV Distributor, shall launch its «low-cost» DTT TV package by December 2007. Initially planned for September, the start of the NTF service has been postponed to be synchronised with the coming rather strict legal framework governing the sales of TV sets in France. However, as per the original plan, the whole technical platform is now ready to go live. All necessary tests have been successfully completed, thus enabling, if needs be, to start operation at any time.

By releasing on the 5th of March 2007 the « Television of the Future » Law, France imposes that by December 5, 2007, all TV makers should be selling throughout the country only TV sets with a built-in digital terrestrial tuner (iDTV) – such iDTV being systematically fitted with the standardized Common Interface slot which offers straight plug-n-play compatibility with the MPEG-4 Pocket Technology developed by NEOTION.

As a consequence, anybody acquiring a TV set will be sure to get an equipment ready for advanced MPEG-4 Pay TV, thus with no need anymore to clutter the TV set with another box, often leased, neither having to multiply the cabling and the number of remote controls. Far easier to use and to deploy, this unique offer moreover enables people to enjoy the full digital image quality as all the video process is now directly performed, in a very optimized way and with no degradation, by the iDTV set.

The equipment of the Pay TV DTT subscribers going for the NTF access will be done through the compelling range of NEOTION’s Pockets: the very first MPEG-4 decoder in a card that can be seamless slotted into the rear of all DTT legacy television sets.

All Pay TV terrestrial channels being actually selected by the CSA Regulator, and equally available for all licensed Distributors over the same coverage as DTT in general, the differentiation between the Distributor offers will essentially not be done around the channels’ subscription price itself – which will be somehow similar for all packages but through the receiver aspects (depending on the performances, the cost, not to mention the deposit & rental monthly fee often implied in most alternative solutions than the NTF one).

There is in France a potential of 1.5 million households ready to subscribe to a Pay TV offer, so long as it is simple (DTT), and low cost (below 10 € a month, including the decoder). “Together with our valuable partners, NTF intends to play a key role in the success of Pay DTT in France by ideally combining the key assets that have been driving the free-to-air Digital Terrestrial dazzling success, being quality, low cost, and ease of use » said Laurent JABIOL, President of NTF.

Link: Neotion TNT France (NTF)