A Divi box, or not a Divi box. That is the question...........................
multichannel.com
Zenith, News Digital Develop 'World Box'
By LESLIE ELLIS
Zenith Electronics Corp. last week strengthened its partnership with News Digital Systems by announcing plans to jointly produce digital set-tops.
The new line, called "World Box," will initially target the international direct-to-home marketplace, branching out to cable and wireless cable applications later next year, executives said.
NDS "has a pretty strong, almost end-to-end system, but they were lacking a partner that had the set-top box and the retail-distribution strengths," said Bill Luehrs, president of Zenith's Network Systems Division. "That's the area where Zenith fits."
Domestically, Zenith is partnered with Divicom Inc. for the 3 million set-tops on order from the Americast telco/The Walt Disney Co. consortium. The NDS deal does not affect Zenith's ties to Divicom, Luehrs said.
As part of the agreement, NDS will provide software, conditional-access and headend products, executives said.
Zenith and NDS announced the partnership at last week's IBC Show in Amsterdam, Netherlands. During a speech there, Abe Peled, CEO of NDS, called Zenith "the ideal partner to provide" integrated receiver/decoders.
NDS referred to the project under its internal code name, "Project Mummy Bear," as a solution for medium-sized broadcasters with up to 1 million subscribers.
"It is particularly useful for broadcasters who operate regionally, or in small or developing markets offering cable, satellite or digital terrestrial services," said Peled.
Barry Hobbs, manager of end-to-end systems support for NDS, said Zenith's first product for NDS will be an advanced IRD that supports QPSK (quadrature phase shift key) demodulation, MPEG-2 video and audio.
"World Box does have applicability to the cable industry," noted Hobbs. "If you use a QAM [quadrature amplitude modulation] demodulator in the tuner section, the rest of the box can be a straight MPEG-2 receiver."
Neither Hobbs nor Luehrs would discuss pricing for World Box. "Suffice it to say that it will be priced to attract the consumer market," Luehrs said. |
