IWEDIA at the heart of innovation providing connected services for TV sets

RENNES, France — IWEDIA Middleware, the international provider of software solutions for connected digital television terminals, today announced its active involvement in advanced R&D projects aimed at providing a variety of connected services for TV sets.

To keep in step with the ongoing digital broadcasting revolution and meet the needs of its customers – key players in the consumer electronics market – IWEDIA is implementing a product development strategy which is driven both by market demand and by innovation. In this strategy, the TV set is seen as a central component of the digital living room, where broadcast TV networks and broadband internet access converge.

To provide substance for its strategic vision of connected TV sets over the next few years, IWEDIA is actively involved in French and European collaborative R&D projects, notably as part of Brittany’s world-class Media & Networks competitiveness cluster.

IWEDIA is one of the partners of the Companym@ges project, which has the financial backing of the French Single Interministerial Fund (FUI) and the Bretagne Region. The initiative is being headed up by Alcatel Lucent and includes such leading partners as TDF, the TELECOM Bretagne graduate school, media group Le Télégramme, the University of Western Brittany Sociology Research Unit and several SMEs.

The project is investigating how digital broadcasting can offer innovative services at the interface between consumers and business. IWEDIA is supplying its hybrid broadcast/broadband Comedia middleware enriched with new functionalities capable of supporting a number of applications:

• a new generation of interactive TV services, disseminated in broadcast mode and relayed via broadband, based on HTML/JavaScript technology and enabling content editors present on terrestrial digital television networks to make the most of network convergence. For instance, the project is experimenting with interactive advertising and direct marketing, allowing viewers to contact a call centre directly via their TV set
• Push video services based on SIP/RTP technologies; in the above example, this enables telesales staff to use their PC and IP softphone to talk to customers via their TVs. As they talk by phone to their customers, telesales staff can send suitable video content to illustrate and reinforce their message
• IP-network-based videocommunication services using SIP/RTP/H.264 technologies will be tested in retirement homes as a means of maintaining contact between senior citizens and their friends and family
• Information portal-type services available via the Internet, offering services such as audio versions of newspaper articles

Patrick Desproges, CEO, IWEDIA, says: “Our involvement in these advanced R&D projects is vital in terms of our product strategy. It enables us to anticipate market trends as well as implement and master tomorrow’s technologies so that they can be incorporated into our product roadmap. What is more, they are a convincing illustration of our vision of tomorrow’s TV set as the core component of the digital living room, providing access to a whole range of added-value connected services.”