Yes Launches NDS VOD Service Using Progressive Download Technology

LONDON, UK — IPTV World Forum — NDS Group, the leading provider of technology solutions for digital pay-TV, today announced that Yes, the sole provider of satellite television in Israel, has launched NDS’ VOD service, based on Progressive Download (PDL) technology, for its hybrid satellite-IP digital video recorder (DVR) platform.

Yes subscribers can now download a movie or series to their MaxTotal HD DVR over the open internet to watch immediately or view later. Yes is now offering access to 5,000 free and pay VOD titles – including HD content, with plans to upload hundreds of new titles each month.

NDS’ PDL technology removes the buffering problems associated with low bandwidth to deliver uninterrupted viewing. It allows yes to deliver IP content even over low bandwidth connections while ensuring a quality of service matching that of traditional VOD. Using the internet to download content to the DVR hard drive; once enough content is cached, the viewer can start playback and any remaining content is downloaded in background mode.

PDL provides a cost-effective way for yes to deliver HD VOD without requiring video servers. Instead, content is stored on less expensive download servers – FTP or HTTP web servers – and deployed at the edge of the network.

The new service was developed and launched as part of the NDS MediaHighway® roadmap programme. The MediaHighway roadmap continues to enable Yes to introduce new and revenue generating features, along with further enhancements to their existing services as part of an ongoing partnership with NDS. For Yes, the launch of NDS VOD marks yet another successful cooperation based on the roadmap, paving the way for future developments and the introduction of new features and services.

“In the past few years we have introduced a number of technological advances in partnership with NDS. As we took these pioneering steps NDS has always been at our side with confidence in our vision,” said Itzhak Elyakim, VP of Engineering and CTO at Yes. “Both ourselves and NDS could see the potential of hybrid platforms as they emerged and we ensured that all the STBs and DVRs we have deployed since 2005 have been IP-enabled.”

“Yes continues to be at the forefront of new technology, ensuring it maintains its strong position in the market with innovative new services that appeal to viewers,” said Boaz Amram, Director of Business Development, NDS. “Their introduction of VOD with progressive download is another great move towards providing the ultimate customer experience; with our continued cooperation on the MediaHighway roadmap we look forward to the next stage of development”.

The Yes platform utilises an existing end-to-end suite of technologies from NDS, including NDS VideoGuard® conditional access, NDS PC Show™ DRM – for their online video content including downloads, streaming content and VOD; NDS Unified Headend™ to distribute content across different devices – resulting in significant operational cost efficiencies, and NDS Dynamic Audience Measurement Solution to measure viewer interaction with content, advertising and advanced services such as DVR functionality.