Netgem and Thomcast Partner

Netgem (www.netgem.com), a European provider of technologies for interactive television, and Thomcast ( www.thomcast.com), a supplier of data and multimedia broadcast systems, announced a partnership and the launch of Netgem's software platform for interactive digital television.

Under the agreement between Netgem and Thomcast, the two companies will develop an integrated offering for interactive television designed for broadcasters of audiovisual content based on DVB-HTML and DVB-MHP standards.

The agreement also marks the start of development of a complete offer based on the streaming technology MPEG2-DVB, permitting the delivery of a high quality multimedia flow on an IP network.

"We are particularly pleased to announce our partnership with Thomcast,'' said Eric Le Bihan, Netgem's VP Products and Solutions in a statement. "Our work together will let television operators benefit from an integrated offer allowing for rapid deployment of even richer content and services, giving them the opportunity to create additional revenue streams compared to traditional digital television offerings.''

Serge Mal, director of Digital and Multimedia Systems at Thomcast, added that "the partnership with Netgem permits Thomcast to reinforce its position as leader distributing interactive data through open receiver solutions capitalizing on a performance core treating HTML data using Linux. A new advance in the area of convergence between the worlds of broadcast and the Internet will be realized by the commercialization of this end-to-end solution, building on the know-how of our two companies.''