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The
cornerstone of the Minerva IP Television Headend, Minerva
iTVManager is a carrier-class, highly scalable television
services management suite. With its Management Platform
and Client Module iTVManager
performs all of the operations necessary to manage the
delivery of interactive television services, including
Live TV, Video-on-Demand (VOD), Subscription-VOD (SVOD),
and Pay-Per-View (PPV).
A robust Client Module enables subscribers to perform
quick channel changing from the Electronic Program Guide
(EPG) and to order VOD and PPV movies with a simple touch
of the remote.Operations such as subscriber management,
channel management and movie asset management - while
feature rich - are easy to use.< Creating a channel line-up
is a snap withiTVManager's intuitive graphical user interface.
Operators can quickly create service packages with tiered
pricing. Business rules can be easily customized. For
example, iTVManager can be configured to call for administrative
approval for service package upgrade/downgrade requests
or to require the subscriber to stay with the new service
package for a predetermined length of time before changing.
iTVManager automates recurring processes like content
acquisition, program guide generation, and billing. The
Minerva management software can be customized and localized
using the Minerva Customization Kit (CK).
Minerva iTVManager is delivered pre-installed
on an Intel Pentium-based Linux server. A single server
can support up to 5,000 concurrent users. The software
supports clustering of servers, making the Minerva iTVManager
solution scalable to meet the requirements of even the
largest of networks
Client
Module Top
Critical to the success of IP Television
services is the subscriber's ability to interact with
the remote control and on screen menus. The experience
must be friendly and easy to use. The Minerva iTVManager
client's user interface is intuitive, simple to navigate,
and provides easy access to all of the available services.
This is accomplished by a customizable interface, based
on HTML and Java script, compatible with any IP enabled
set-top box or PC client. This interface provides
access to a suite of services including live television,
video-on-demand, and web access. Each user can subscribe
to individualized channel listings and movie packages.
They can also record simultaneously multiple channels
and even pause live television. The embedded application
offers fast response for heavily used functions, such
as EPG scrolling, while the web-based modules offers access
to frequently updated subsystems (e.g. VOD rentals). The
native embedded application also ensures that broadcast
TV services are always available even in case of back-office
application server failure.The iTVManager client interface
can be customized to suit the look and feel of the broadband
service provide, incorporating special branding and layout
preferences.Most importantly, the iTVManager Client is
supported by a variety of STBs including Amino, Humax
Digital, Kreatel, Pace, and Thomson Multimedia ensuring
that Minerva customers have access to the lastest and
most cost-effective customer premise equipment.
Management
Platform Top
The iTVManager Administration server
is the core of an IP headend, managing services and operations
from channel and media asset management to service packaging
and pricing, subscriber and device management - even billing,
subscriber requests, usage profiling, and more.Making
the management and operation of your video services offering
as painless as possible means doing our best to insulate
you from the complexity of working directly with lower-level
components like video servers and EAS systems. color:navy'
For the same reason, we automate recurring processes like
EPG generation, billing and PPV scheduling.
Even
rolling out advanced services such as VOD and SVOD is
easy with iTVManager'sautomated VOD Distribution system.
VODDS periodically imports media assets and the associated
metadata released by content providers.Through our transaction
recording and profiling infrastructure, iTVManager can
provide you with service usage statistics. Need to find
out the top 10 TV programs watched last month? Want to
perform data mining on the usage details for targeted
marketing and advertising purposes? It's all here. Contact
us for more information.
Options
The following options are available
with Minerva iTVManager:
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On-Screen
Caller ID |
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Emergency
Alert System |
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Data
Services |
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Customization
Kit |
On-screen
Caller ID Top
With this module, you can further
differentiate your service with an option cable and
satellite providers cannot deliver. The information
pertaining to an incoming call appears on the subscriber's
TV screen for a user-specified time period. One of the
most valued options, subscribers will pay between US$3-5
per month for this service.
Easy
to implement, caller information is resolved on the
server side and delivered through iTVManager's messaging
system - eliminating the need for an additional client
device at the subscriber premises.
This
option includes the Innovative Systems Application Peripheral
(ISAP), which performs caller information lookups at
the central office, saving expenses incurred by querying
an external source. The ISAP also supports other value-added
voice services such as voice mail and telemarketer screening.
Emergency
Alert System (EAS) - This
iTVManager module works intelligently with off-the-shelf
EAS CODECs to deliver emergency alerts that follow FCC
specifications. Our EAS module implements the following
switching logics entirely in software, obviating the
need for a complex video routing system:
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Targets
messages to specified regions |
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Provides
video and audio interrupts on all channels |
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Scrolls
messages on specific channels |
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Blocks
or suppresses specific messages entirely, or on
specific channels |
Data
service modules are available
for both EPG and PPV data. iTVManager can automatically
download and process up to 14 days of TV schedule data.
Customization Kit (CK) Top
Minerva offers a standards-based iTVManager
customization kit. The kit provides developers familiar
with HTTP and XML a complete set of APIs to localize and
modify the iTVManager Client Module look and feel. Sample
source code and test applications are also provided to
allow developers to validate their code.
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