Pictured Above – Laurent Jabiol – President/co-founder Neotion

Neotion introduced a MPEG-4 decoder that fits inside a smart card. This effectively eliminates the need for an MPEG-4 set-top for any television with a smartcard interface (apparently in Europe, the Smartcard interface has been mandated for years). This box is being used in conjunction with PC software to allow “over the top” providers to offer service directly to the television. The PC serves as the transcoder (e.g. Flash to MPEG-4) as well as the RSS reader to allow DVR capability for Internet-delivered content.

At this point, Neotion seems to be focused on the over the top market, as the Neotion’s President, Laurent Jabiol, indicated there are no plans to make a CableCard version of this which would be compatible with U.S. Cable Television systems. They have launched a service with the Lithuanian Pay TV operator, UAB Mikrovisatos TV whereby both Free to Air and Subscription services will be encoded in MPEG-4, increasing bandwidth efficiency for the operator.

One of the benefits of this technology is that it allows the creation of hybrid off-air/IP services without the need for a set-top. It also works with various off-the-shelf encryption systems (Conax, in the case of the Lithuanian operator). Other benefits include:

• Elimination of the set-top
• No new remote is required (TV remote can be used)
• Change the card to adapt to new technology without having to replace the TV

Additionally, Neotion has some other nifty devices like an MPEG-4 to MPEG-2 dongle, which apparently allows a legacy MPEG-2 box to be used in an MPEG-4 environment.

technorati tags:MPEG-4, Neotion, NAB2007, STB, Set-top, IPTV, Internet, TV