Microsoft TV to Accelerate Microsoft Mediaroom Deployments With New Interoperability and Qualification Lab

Program will facilitate quality control and enable faster time to market for IPTV ecosystem vendors and service providers.
Today at IBC2007 Microsoft Corp. announced the Microsoft® Mediaroom™ Interoperability and Qualification Lab (IQ Lab) for digital video encoders. This program will help enable the ongoing interoperability and compliance of encoders used in deployments of the award-winning Microsoft Mediaroom multimedia and Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) software platform. IQ Lab-compliant encoding vendors will become recommended Microsoft Mediaroom ecosystem partners. As the Microsoft Mediaroom software platform continues to gain momentum around the world, encoding partners will be able to capitalize on this growth by enabling their solutions to seamlessly integrate with the platform to deliver fast and smooth service provider deployments.
Based in Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus in Mountain View, Calif., the IQ Lab gives encoding vendors the opportunity to test their products in a controlled IPTV production environment, with set-top boxes from several vendors. The program also provides the following services for encoding vendors:



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Support and training. Access to Microsoft IPTV training sessions and a dedicated team of Microsoft engineers and program managers to evaluate whether encoding specifications are met

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Testing and qualification lab access. Dedicated testing time in the lab with access to test reporting and analysis resources

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Test tools and consulting services. Access to test kits and Mediaroom software and AV consulting expertise to encoding solutions to support future versions of the software platform
For Microsoft Mediaroom service provider customers, the IQ Lab helps enhance encoder product quality and gives them an opportunity to work with a broad array of encoding vendors as they deploy advanced digital TV services. In addition, with the IQ Lab program Microsoft and its encoding partners can remain aligned as the Microsoft Mediaroom platform evolves. Several of Microsoft TV’s encoding partners, including Envivio Inc., Harmonic Inc., Motorola, TANDBERG Television and Thomson, have already signed up for the IQ Lab. Each of these companies has also completed the qualification of one or more encoders, which are now in use by several Mediaroom customers.
“As worldwide deployments of Microsoft Mediaroom accelerate, we plan to offer our service provider customers the strongest set of encoding solutions to choose from, while enabling our encoding partners to succeed,� said Joe Seidel, director of global partner development for the Microsoft TV business at Microsoft. “The investment and commitment on our part and by our encoding partners is an indication of the strength of our global IPTV ecosystem.�
More than 19 of the world’s leading service providers have selected the Microsoft Mediaroom platform for their digital TV offerings. Commercial deployments are under way with 11 providers. Microsoft Mediaroom will be on display at the Topaz stand at IBC2007, taking place Sept. 6–11 at Amsterdam’s RAI Congress Centre. Additional information about the IQ Lab program can be obtained by sending e-mail to [email protected].
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