IneoQuest opened its Central European Cable and IPTV Technology Center in Rosenheim, Germany. The facility will assist and enable network operators in the deployment and management of advanced Quality of Service solutions for digital cable and IPTV networks.

Designed to emulate an actual video head-end, the Rosenheim Center is a hands-on, demonstration and technology training facility that enables cable and telecommunications network operators to learn about the QOS challenges they face, especially as they transition to video-over-IP backbones. The Rosenheim Center also provides an ideal staging ground for technical on-site trials, where pilot technologies can be evaluated in a safe, controlled environment before being actively deployed in live customer environments.

Tele2 selects Digital Fountain’s ToughStream Solution to further improve their IPTV service. After successful trials, ToughStream is now live and operational on Tele2’s IPTV network, providing protection against “glitches,” or visible errors that naturally occur when delivering real-time media over IP networks.

ToughStream is a software solution that eliminates video and audio degradation caused by packet loss, latency or out-of-order delivery. These effects are normal and prevalent conditions on all IP networks because IP is, by design, a “best effort” delivery protocol. Because it is a software-based solution, ToughStream is highly configurable, and easy to deploy on any IPTV network. An extraordinarily scalable solution, ToughStream has negligible hardware requirements while providing high QoE including fast channel change times.

SureWest Communications has selected and deployed IneoQuest service probes as part of its ongoing commitment to provide outstanding quality of experience to the large video subscriber base of its SureWest Broadband subsidiaries in the Sacramento region. SureWest initially relied upon IneoQuest's award-winning Singulus Lite Cricket service probe to help evaluate and test video performance on the SureWest Broadband IP Video vendor equipment in its test labs. These IneoQuest products also have played an active role in the evaluation performance testing of hardware from such vendors as Occam, Allied Telesyn and Cisco.

OPTICOM unleashes www.PEVQ.org, the new test & measurement industry's market overview on Video QoE Testing. The new web portal comprises an up-to-date listing on commercially available video quality testing tools which can analyze the picture quality for video telephony, Mobile TV and IPTV by providing a MOS score, just as subscribers would perceive the quality of a service.

OPTICOM's Perceptual Evaluation of Video Quality, a patented technology proposed for international standardization, measures degradations occurring through a network by analyzing the degraded video signal output from the network. QoE testing is based on modeling the behavior of the human visual system and besides the overall quality abnormalities in the video signal are quantified by a variety of KPIs, including PSNR, distortion indicators and lip-sync delay.

Digital Fountain releases a new version of its ToughStream solution, which ensures end-to-end quality of service for IPTV networks. ToughStream 2.0, which will be released in January 2008, provides enhanced deployment flexibility for IPTV service providers, enabling them to “surgically” insert protection only where needed without any impact on areas of the network or subscriber nodes that are already performing to required service levels. The ability to strategically insert protection lowers deployment costs and reduces operational complexities stemming from system-wide upgrades that would otherwise be required. This is particularly important for operators who maintain several different set-top-box models and configurations.

Spirent announced the ability to conduct IP video quality testing on its Tech-X Plus. With this new feature, Spirent enables field technicians to verify IPTV subscribers’ Quality of Experience by measuring both the transport network and video content. This provides a more thorough service quality measurement and an accurate indication of the subscribers’ viewing experience.

JDSU introduces new IPTV and quad-play enhancements to NetComplete, as well as new features to the PVA-1000, a software component of its service assurance solutions portfolio specializing in VoIP analysis using remote software capture agents. The new additions address the growing network operator demand for in-depth, accurate measurements and end-to-end performance monitoring to ensure quality IPTV, VoIP and other quad-play service delivery.

Spirent Communications has signed a formal partnership agreement with Alcatel-Lucent to provide Triple Play testing solutions that enhance operations of Alcatel-Lucent's global IP Transformation Center. The IPTC is the industry's only state-of-the-art operation dedicated to the advancement of triple play, IPTV, IMS and FMC deployment projects across the globe.

Alcatel-Lucent's IPTC develops, integrates, tests and conforms end-to-end IP networking solutions towards sustained KPI's and KQI's. This helps operators and enterprises, faced with a highly competitive environment, to transform their networks to a full IP-based architecture. Through this partnership, Alcatel-Lucent and Spirent help advance the interoperability of collaborative IP networking solutions up to end to end service delivery.

IneoQuest announces the release of IQDVx, a PC-based software application that enables unprecedented visibility into the structure of IP Video by bridging the analysis requirements for both MPEG and IP. Using IQDVx, IP Video providers can analyze, troubleshoot and identify faults in IPTV media files—and correlate anomalies and MPEG errors with the resulting picture quality as viewed by subscribers. With its targeted, multi-dimensional approach to analysis, IQDVx adds analysis depth to IneoQuest’s IQPinPoint, which includes an extensive line of award-winning hardware and software products aimed at lowering operational expenses associated with maintaining an IP Video network.

Operax and Orca Interactive offer a comprehensive solution allowing operators to manage their service expansion while ensuring Quality of Service for advanced video and IPTV services. Operax provides pre-IMS and IMS-compliant, carrier-grade dynamic Resource and Admission Control solutions to operators worldwide, allowing them to guarantee end-to-end QoS for any IP session. Combining these advanced technologies with Orca Interactive‘s highly flexible IPTV middleware, the new solution will enable operators to quickly deploy new applications and services without reconfiguring their network infrastructure. In addition, the new solution will help provide leverage in the face of growing competition from incumbent cable and satellite pay-TV operators, as well as broadcasters and service providers offering Internet video streaming over operators’ existing infrastructures.

Agilent Technologies announces a new software option for its handheld Ethernet performance tester, FrameScope Pro. The new option simplifies the deployment and troubleshooting of IPTV services and enables service quality tests at the residential gateway. Validating network integrity and transport quality of service are critical to ensuring a high quality of experience to new video-service subscribers. Technicians of telecom service providers who deploy Ethernet-based video need appropriate tools to analyze the network and service conditions at a residential gateway. Visual and aural inspections of the delivered content are less reliable methods to detect marginal network conditions; analysis of the transport stream and service transactions can reveal undesired network behavior before artifacts and drop-outs become visible and audible.

Ikanos introduces its Rapid Rate Adaptation technology, which is designed to optimize the user experience of IPTV and triple play by minimizing noise-induced service interruptions. Sudden, large noise changes on the DSL line can potentially cause dropped connections and interruptions of service. RRA minimizes such link drops by rapidly and dynamically adapting data rates to accommodate the additional noise without dropping the connection, thus improving service availability and the user experience.

BitGravity launches a new content delivery network designed to enable a new wave of Internet media that is expected to be higher quality and more interactive. BitGravity, which has been operating in stealth for over a year, has already validated its technology with over 50 brand name customers. The company has developed a network engineered for a generation of web-based content just being envisioned by major media companies and innovative media start-ups. BitGravity’s network is facilitating the creative development of multimedia applications previously limited by the performance constraints of the Internet.

Digital Fountain and Neptuny launch of a new server-based software solution to dramatically improve quality of service for IPTV providers. ToughStream Server is a stand-alone, enterprise class software solution that can be installed on a standard server within an operator’s IPTV head-end, protecting the entire network against packet loss, the leading cause of IPTV customer complaints.

ToughStream Server was jointly developed under a new partnership between Digital Fountain and Neptuny. Based on Digital Fountain’s ToughStream solution, ToughStream Server includes additional technology from Neptuny that enables fast, easy deployment of ToughStream on an IPTV provider’s standard server equipment. Because it is a highly flexible, highly configurable software solution, ToughStream Server can be installed, configured, and fully deployed in a very short period of time.

Adobe announces the latest update for Adobe Flash Player 9 software, code-named Moviestar, which includes H.264 standard video support - the same standard deployed in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD high definition video players - and High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio support, as well as hardware accelerated, multi-core enhanced full screen video playback. These advancements will extend Adobe’s leadership position in Web video by enabling the delivery of HD television quality and premium audio content through the ubiquitous Adobe Flash Player and pave the way to expand rich media Flash experiences on the desktop and H.264 ready consumer devices. The latest update for Adobe Flash Player 9 will be available in beta for immediate download later today on Adobe Labs at http://labs.adobe.com.