Telecom Italia believed to be Amino’s Intel box customer

The western Tier 1 telecom operator that recently ordered Amino’s new Intel-based Freedom DVB-T hybrid media centre, which combines the reception of digital-terrestrial channels with over-the-top broadband delivery of interactive content, is understood to be Telecom Italia, DTVE Daily has learned.

Telecom Italia declined to confirm whether Amino was the supplier by the time this newsletter went to press. Amino has declined to comment.

The UK-based set-top provider revealed last week that an un-named Western European Tier 1 operator had placed a substantial contract for the Freedom media centre, which is the first device in the market to be based on the Intel Atom CE4100 processor (formerly known as ‘Sodaville’), which supports internet and broadcast applications on a single chip.

Amino’s Freedom media centre, which is designed to enable the convergence of internet and connected TV services with digital-terrestrial broadcast TV, includes DVB-T2 and S2 tuner options to support HD as well as SD services delivered over the air. An integrated hard disk enables the time-shift recording of multiple channels, pause live TV and push video-on-demand services. The device also supports all major internet video formats, including Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4, as well as DLNA functionality that allows the TV to seamlessly play media stored elsewhere on the home network.

If Telecom Italia is confirmed to be the customer, the Italian operator’s Cubovision service will be the first from a growing number of telcos that appear to be ready to embrace over-the-top video services to the TV as a way of complementing or enhancing walled-garden IPTV services.

Telecom Italia unveiled Cubovision, a hybrid broadband device that allows users to access digital-terrestrial broadcast signals as well as internet-delivered video services, in December.