Israel targets China's DTV.

In a joint effort to tap into China's future digital TV (DTV) terrestrial broadcast market, a consortium of eight Israeli broadcast technology companies has joined forces to offer a joint digital television solution for the Chinese market. The eight companies include: Bitband, VBox Communications, Orca Interactive, Scopus Network Technologies, VCON Telecommunications, Kramer Technologies, NDS Group, and TMT Coaxial Networks.

China currently has 120 million cable TV subscribers and a government-backed initiative for the introduction of DTV broadcasts, to be completed by 2015.

The Israeli companies that constitute the consortium are active outside of Israel, as well. In Russia, Scopus Video Networks Ltd. recently completed a project to install IRD receiver-decoders for the fourth stage of Russia's RTRS (Radio Television Republic Network) digitalization project. RTRS was established by the Russian government in 2001 to improve the television and radio broadcast networks in Russia, and to create a joint production and technological unit based on the state television and radio broadcasting networks.

In Europe, Tel Aviv-based Infogate Online, a developer of solutions for Internet-based television (IPTV) content; Dutch start up Simac Broadcast; and Irdeto--a subsidiary of multinational media group Naspers, which develops digital content protection, have teamed up to provide IPTV services. Infogate will supply the middleware, i.e. the service that will interface between content suppliers and customers to ensure the latter have access to their specific choices of content channels. Irdeto, which develops security software for protection of video content against piracy and theft, will provide the requisite security and licensing services.

In the U.S., digital pay-TV solutions provider NDS Group has partnered with satellite broadcast provider SES Americom to provide technology enabling the American company to encrypt its programming.

Another Israeli company, advanced digital video solutions provider Optibase, has deployed its customized professional digital video ingest system for Lifetime Entertainment Services for the network's transition from tape to a file-based environment.

Optibase provides professional encoding, decoding, video server upload and streaming solutions for telecom operators, service providers, broadcasters and content creators. The company's platforms enable the creation, broadband streaming and playback of high quality digital video.

As part of a DAM system, the integrated solution enables top quality video capture, edit decision list (EDL) creation, annotation archive retrieval, editing and asset management, at the same time. It incorporates encoding technologies with specially developed capabilities such as frame accurate encoding engines, digital master (50 Mbps MPEG-2 IMX) and proxy ingest (3 Mbps MPEG-2 and MPEG-1), embedded audio, and decode-while-encode for the real time verification of the actual output content.