NAGRA AND ACCEDO PARTNER ON APPLICATION STORE FOR NEXT GENERATION MEDIA CONVERGENCE PLATFORM

• Partnership enables service providers to explore new revenue streams through an “off-the-shelf” application store enabled by OpenTV 5, NAGRA’s new media convergence platform.
• HTML5 and other key Web standards allow for the rapid creation and development of TV applications, managed through the award-winning Accedo Application Sphere®.
• OpenTV 5’s application sandboxing technology enables a secure yet open ecosystem of applications

CHESEAUX, Switzerland, and STOCKHOLM, Sweden – September 7^th, 2012 – NAGRA, the digital TV division of the Kudelski Group (SIX:KUD.S) and the world’s leading independent provider of content protection and multiscreen television solutions, and Accedo, a market-leading enabler of TV application solutions, have partnered to deliver an “off-the-shelf” application store and a set of applications to pay-TV service providers.  The application store is available on OpenTV 5, NAGRA’s newest media convergence platform, and powered by the Accedo Application Sphere®” application management system. NAGRA and Accedo will demonstrate the application store and its range of advanced television applications at IBC 2012 on NAGRA’s stand C81 in Hall 1, of the RAI Exhibition and Conference Center, September 7-12, 2012, in Amsterdam.

“We’re excited to partner with Accedo on an application store for OpenTV 5 which demonstrates the unique capabilities and features of one of our most open client device platforms yet,” said Samir Mehta, Senior Vice President Digital TV Solutions for NAGRA. “OpenTV 5 is a multi-service, multi-device platform and was built with flexibility and versatility in mind. It embraces all that the cloud has to offer, including innovative Web capabilities like HTML5 that accelerate innovation and help service providers deliver a unique and feature-rich TV experience to their viewers. Together with Accedo, we are opening up the television landscape to enable access to more of the content consumers want to watch.”

“NAGRA is a leader in deploying innovative and advanced solutions for DTV and the OpenTV 5 platform provides the ideal environment for Accedo’s application management technology,” said Michael Lantz, Chief Executive Officer for Accedo. “The increasing popularity of applications combined with the multiscreen and multi-device strategies of pay-TV service providers today demand a robust and scalable framework to manage TV applications – which is at the core of Accedo’s Application Sphere®.”

The Accedo application store is accessible through NAGRA’s OpenTV 5 Guide which includes fully integrated application store capabilities. It can be populated with any kind of TV application – from basic games and news to advanced video and social applications.

Leveraging the most advanced Web-based application authoring environments – HTML5, SVG, CCS and Javascript, OpenTV 5 accelerates innovation by reducing time-to-market of new features. It enables service providers to have access to a large body of existing applications as well as a vast network of experienced developers to rapidly create and deploy innovative applications with superior graphics performance. What’s more, OpenTV 5 provides an unprecedented level of customizability and openness in a secure environment thanks to its NAGRA SafeApp application sandboxing technology.

Developers have access to all of the underlying OpenTV 5 functionality in both SVG and HTML through OpenTV 5’s Client Component Object Model (CCOM) API.  In addition to the HTML5 environment, NAGRA’s open application development framework “Ninja” provides many of the common functionalities required for rapid application authoring and customization. These features accelerate common development tasks such as menus and branding, back office integration, PVR management, VOD portal listings or online community access. The OpenTV 5 CCOM and Ninja documentation is freely available at http://community.opentv.com.

The Accedo Application Sphere® is a cloud-based, scalable and open application management platform enabling media companies and operators to manage high performance, multi-tenant application portals and application stores for any device. It was awarded “Outstanding Technology Innovation” at the 2012 annual Connected TV Awards earlier this year.