(25 June 2007 2:10 pm)

MUMBAI: Taiwan Television Enterprise (TTV) has selected Singapore's Zentek Technology as its preferred provider for the first Digital Video Broadcasting -- Multimedia Home Platform (DVB-MHP) set-top box (STB).

This business deal marks Zentek's first foray in Taiwan market for DVB-MHP STB.

Taiwan terrestrial broadcasters have adopted DVB-MHP as the transmission standard for terrestrial broadcast. Since July 2004 all five terrestrial broadcasters have been broadcasting digital television programmes.

To accelerate its push for DVB-MHP, TTV will be the first Taiwan broadcaster to define the DVB-MHP specification of the STB. As a next step in offering value-added services to television viewers, TTV will broadcast interactive digital television applications based on the DVB-MHP standard, and will launch the DVB-MHP STB to the Taiwan market.

The DVB-MHP STB is based on the NEC chipset EMMA2SL and powered by Zentek MHP Middleware. TV viewers can get the latest information from the TTV interactive applications, such as news, weather, traffic information, property market and stock market.

The set top box supports stored applications, which saves bandwidth -- broadcasters can use TTV to deliver wider ranges of services to TV viewers. The STB also supports banking card and GPRS as a return channel. This advanced feature enables TV-commerce services, such as TV shopping, banking and transactions.