Amino Acquires Tilgin Set-top Box Business

Amino has acquire Tilgin's IPTV set-top box business. Tilgin has sold about 500,000 set-top boxes. Amino will acquire new features as part of this deal that include picture in picture, whole home connectivity, and green power.

Tilgin will now focus is on IP Residential Gateways. Tilgin said that it has a strong market position and leading gateway products. Tilgin's IPTV business has not reached the volumes required for sustained profitability. Amino and Tilgin intends to commence a sales cooperation regarding IP Residential Gateways.

There are fewer major new opportunities in Telco IPTV now. We will see more companies that have not reached critical mass following the divestiture or acquisition route.

Amino Introduces HD Digital Set-top Box

Amino introduce an HD set-top box that included only digital interfaces such as HDMI for the U.S. Amino believes that nearly all flat panel TVs in the U.S. have HDMI interfaces. The AmiNET 130 does not have analog interfaces such as coax or S-Video interfaces.

This set-top box is very small and could be hidden behind the TV using string to tie it up or with a velco strip to attach it. Amino state that its small size is generating interest from consumer electronics companies interested in integrating IPTV into their TVs and other video products.

This was just about the only interesting IPTV hardware product that I saw at NXTcomm. The small size of this box should prove to be very attractive to a lot of customers.

Pace to Acquire Phillips Set-top Box Business

Pace has agreed to acquire Philips' set-top box business for 95 million euros. Philps' set-top box business is based in France and has 335 employees. Pace expects that the combined company will produce about 8.5 million set-top boxes a year and have revenues of more than $1.0 billion in revenue.

With this acquisition, Pace will add BT and Telefonica of Spain as IPTV set-top box customers.

Pace has focused primarily on the cable and satellite set-top box market. Philips will acquire to plum IPTV accounts with the acquisition in BT and Telefonica.

Motorola Shipped 2 Million IPTV Set-top Boxes

Motorola announced that it has shipped 2 million IPTV set-top boxes and has shipped 1 million in the last five months. The 2 millionth unit was shipped as part of an order for 150 thousand set-top boxes to Telia Sonera in Sweden.

Motorola is the leading IPTV set-top box company based on its own products as well as the products that it acquired with Kreatel in 2006.

Verizon Issues $1B IPTV RFP

An article in Light Reading says that Verizon has issued an RFP for set-top boxes and a content protection/digital rights management system for its FiOS TV IPTV service.

Verizon is using Motorola set-top boxes today. Verizon uses an RF feed for its broadcast channels. This requires that the set-top box be a hybrid IPTV/RF cable-like set-top box.

I am currently working on an IPTV forecast that will be released in August. This forecast will show the opportunity for five IPTV product categories that include set-top boxes, content protection/digital rights management systems, access systems, video on demand systems, and middleware software.

The preliminary result from this analysis shows that Verizon will spend well over $1 billion for set-top boxes between 2008 and 2012 and over $50 million for content protection/digital rights management.

Motorola is certainly in a good position to get a piece of this business. I expect that Verizon will select at least one other set-top box manufacturer to keep inject competition. Verizon has three PON vendors today - Tellabs, Motorola, and Alcatel-Lucent.

Verizon started off with the Microsoft cable middleware. It has now taken over the further development of its middleware. I consider Verizon's middleware to be an in house development today.

I believe that Verizon started using Microsoft's content protection/digital rights management system and will replace it as part of this RFP. I believe that Verizon will select a single system. This is a real plum for the content protection/digital rights management system company that wins.

Motorola Introduces Open Set-Top Box

Motorola has made the Kreatel KreaTV software platform available on its own set-top boxes. This platform makes these devices with the range of middleware systems that Kreatel supports with its own boxes. Up until now, the Motorola set-tops have supported only the Microsoft Mediaroom software for ATT.

This opens the European and Asian markets to the new Motorola set-top boxes. It also gives its current customers the ability to transition to other middleware systems without changing set-top boxes.

Set-top Box Directory

There is a listing of IPTV set-top box manufacturers at

http://www2.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=2470368625289588135

This list looks to be quite complete.

Nortel Getting Serious About IPTV

Nortel announced an IPTV partnerships today with NDS that provides access to the NDS MediaHighway middleware. It also announced that it will offer its own set-top box using a unit manufactured by the LG-Nortel joint venture.

Neither of these appear to be strategic relationships. Nortel has already partnered with Minerva with its niddleware software and Amino for set-top boxes. Nortel has not declared that it is abandoning either of these relationships.