Canal+Technologies enters Indian market

Mumbai: Canal+Technologies (C+T) of France, represented in India by Recreate Solutions, has announced its intention to provide its conditional access and middleware software to the satellite TV channels being beamed into Indian homes, the government-owned Doordarshan terrestrial TV channels, the cable operator fraternity and all the 13 companies that have recently been granted permission to set up uplinking facilities in India. C+T has expertise in designing and implementing digital TV systems and in offering its clients open standard solutions. Its technologies today already power more than 12.5 million digital set-top boxes, deployed on every continent on cable, satellite and terrestrial networks.

Says C+T general manager (sales-Asia/Pacific) Nicolas Andrieu: "C+T was the first to deploy digital satellite and cable in the interactive TV space in Europe in 1996 and 1997 respectively, and, in 1998, was the first digital terrestrial player in interactive TV in the world. It was also the first to deploy a Java-based middleware solution in 1999. I feel certain that C+T will play a major role in Indias interactive TV revolution as well."

Over 20 digital platforms around the world already use C+Ts software called Mediaguard and/or Mediahighway, including the Malaysian satellite operator, Astro Measat, which has deployed over 600,000 digital set-top boxes and the US cable operator WINfirst, which has deployed iTV (interactive TV), over a fibre-to-the-home digital cable network. C+T has already deployed its CA system with the Zee TV bouquet in India.

Says Recreate Solutions CEO Bhaskar Majumdar: "C+T is keen to licence its technology to Indian set-top box manufacturers as it has done internationally. It is also in the process of establishing relationships with all the major components manufacturers and software houses using C+T software, including Mediaguard and Mediahighways integrated development environments."

C+T is an international provider of interactive TV solutions that offers a range of flexible products to broadcasters and digital operators around the world. It has achieved leadership through innovation as it has the ability to integrate both head-end and set-top boxes. C+T has been a radical innovator right from its inception in the nineties in the fast-moving areas of TV-browsing, pay TV, enhanced TV, Internet TV, T-commerce and entertainment and personal recordings. C+T was the global first to deploy a very popular horseracing home-betting application in the millennium year 2000 and was also the first to deploy iTV over a fiber-to-the-home cable network in 2001.

Recreate Solutions is a London-based company, with a major development centre in Mumbai. The Recreate Solutions mission is to help its clients unlock the competitive advantages inherent in rich media-enabled information systems by deploying them strategically across diverse application areas such as E-learning, portal development, information visualisation, enterprise communications and interactive television. Recreate Solutions has skills in DVB, MHP and in Java TV applications and is working with major development platforms such as Mediahighway and OpenTV. Digital TV giant C+T has appointed Recreate Solutions as its representative in India for the Indian pay TV and DTH scenarios. Sainath S Iyer of Recreate Solutions is C+Ts representative in India and is based in Mumbai ().