DiscVision GmbH and Woosha BV present the first results of their recently started cooperation on the IBC 2010 starting on September 10th in Amsterdam.

While people at DiscVision GmbH are experts on STB and especially on PVR technologies, the team of Woosha BV collects experts on technologies for mobile applications and mobile devices. The cooperation of both companies establishes a strong partnership for the development of technologies that allow the control of residential STB and PVR systems using mobile devices such as Android phones, iPhones, iPads and much others.

Using the increasing power and availability of the mobile Internet, it is interesting for the mobile user of a PVR or STB to control his device not only from the living room but indirectly also from all locations within his home but also on the go, i.e. from anywhere outside his home. Thus, the typical scenario that a person cannot make it in time to his home to watch the soccer match in the evening but connects to his PVR via a mobile phone and schedules the recording, is a completelly understood scenario and is exactly the application background of the technology presented by Woosha and DiscVision.

DiscVision has developed for this purpose the connectTV technology that allows to communicate from any IP device to the STB / PVR within the home network without making it necessary to change any setting on the router system at home. Thus, the user just performs a "pairing" of his device with an anoynmous login on a web page and from this moment on, can control the device from this web page.

Woosha is the first to integrate the connectTV protocol into an embedded application that runs on an Android phone and allows instantly to connect to the DiscVision PVR system. The application that is presented to the public for the first time on IBC 2010 collects functionality for the display of the EPG from the STB, scheduling of recording, access to the times and recorded events and certain other functionalities. The system can also be used as a complete replacement of the infrared remote control as it is possible to send every remote control command to the STB. In this way, the system controls the switching of TV and radio channels as well as the playback of media from the connected hard disk drive within the overall home of the user.

The first implementation of the system was done for the eviado one hybrid STB system that is presented on the booth of Aprico / Philips at the IBC.More information about both companies is availble at the web sites www.woosha.it and www.discvision.com

DiscVision, eviado, APRICO Solutions, and Axel Springer present watchmi intelligent personalized TV service for PVR

DiscVision GmbH presents the results of a close cooperation between eviado GmbH, APRICO Solutions from Philips Electronics, and Axel Springer Digital TV Guide GmbH at the IBC 2010 in Amsterdam.

At the booth of APRICO / Philips, the eviado hybrid STB/PVR will be presented including “watchmi” Personal TV, which is powered by the APRICO personalized recommendation technology and the managed EPG from Axel Springer Digital TV Guide. This is the first time that the innovative and highly efficient personalized recommendation technology of APRICO is completely integrated into a PVR system what will be available on the market soon. DiscVision was responsible for the system integration into the overall software stack of the eviado STB system.

The watchmi Personal TV service uses the APRICO recommendation technology, which is based on the concept of personal channels defined by the user who assigns a number of “seed” programs to each personal channel. The subsequent inclusion of additional programs to these channels defines the overall channel profile. In addition to the automatic feedback that the APRICO recommender receives from the user due to the viewing of the automatically recorded TV programs on a personal channel, the user can also explicitly accept or reject the recommendations provided by the watchmi service. This interactive approach allows for a very rapid learning curve, making intelligent recommendations after only a few iterations.

The generation of these intelligent recommendations is only possible if the EPG metadata provide the necessary and in-depth information about the TV program alternatives. To this purpose, a large number of features are provided by the TV program guide experts from the Axel Springer media concern. In this manner, the managed EPG of Axel Springer Digital TV Guide GmbH is essential to empower the APRICO recommendation technology that is at the heart of the watchmi Personal TV service.

Watchmi with APRICO technology is integrated here for the first time in a STB platform. Previous integrations were done based on PC platforms and marketed as watchmi Personal TV by Axel Springer. In a closed cooperation between APRICO and DiscVision GmbH, the recommendation technology was optimized to meet the requirements of embedded devices.