Europe : Thomson is expanding its integrated software and hardware platforms to support 3G solutions for mobile TV - including live video streaming, on demand, and format repurposing.

Thomson has leveraged its IPTV video expertise and technologies, widely used by pay TV and telecoms operators worldwide, to adapt them to 3G/cellular networks. Thomson is combining the ability of its mobile TV head-ends and its SmartVision service platform/VoD servers to support 3G networks in addition to IPTV. This innovative solution allows operators to provide a wide choice of revenue-driving video on demand and live streaming services to mobile handsets. Thomson's new mobile TV solutions can thus provide convergent services and a superior customer viewing experience.

"As operators consider future-proofing their architectures in readiness for convergent services, Thomson is uniquely able to provide a range of head-end and middleware solutions for both fixed and mobile networks. Thomson's solution can simultaneously manage broadcast, unicast and on demand mobile TV services to the same handsets with a unified Electronic Service Guide for 3G/DVB-H services." said Patrick Montliaud, General Manager of Thomson's Network and Integration Solutions.

Optimising Viewing Quality Experience on Smaller Screens

According to a recent survey by TeleAnalytics, 24% of European mobile video and TV trial users stopped using the service because of service quality issues*. Thomson's head-end and VoD solutions ensure greater quality of service, and in addition its ViBE Mobile TV encoder uses innovative format repurposing technologies to automatically adapt images for display on smaller screens, such as mobile phones and PDAs.

Thomson's expertise in compression technologies ensures the best picture quality for enhanced customer experience at 40% less bandwidth requires compared to previous generation codecs. This patent-pending technology intelligently identifies the part of the image that is important to the viewer and automatically resizes the content to deliver the most complete, informative image for the mobile display.

Managing converged video services

Operators will be able to use the SmartVision service platform and VoD servers to support 3G formats for mobile TV as well as for IPTV services. Located in the heart of the operator's network, the server can be used to deliver VoD streams to mobile devices, PCs and set-top boxes.