STMC or IRMC – More industry acronyms, but this time they actually makes sense. Watch this:
ST – Set Top: Where it sits in the home, or
IR - In-Room: Where it fits in a hotel
M – Media: What it does – all types of media, moving, still and audible.
C – Center: The point at which everything comes together.
Set Top Media Center or In-Room Media Center– clever, eh? Actually, probably not, but it certainly does what it says on the tin.
Now the industry marketing speak...Media Centers from CompleteTV provide a fully flexible and upgradeable hardware platform that enables all media to converge into a single entity. And, if you didn’t quite follow that...
Services
The STMC and the IRMC both support standard and high definition TV, can act as an internet radios, provide full internet communication support, are software upgradeable to support new services, can receive video streaming from all video servers, are able to receive digital terrestrial broadcast services, can record content to a hard drive, a memory stick or an external USB drive, can be managed with unique server applications and (to use the mandatory marketing expression), much, much more.
In fact, our media centers are only limited by the power of your imagination. A bold claim – how can we possibly support it? Not difficult, CompleteTV provides a wide range of software options for the STMC/IRMC – options which include middleware, decoders, quality of service monitoring tools, operating systems, software development kits, in fact everything you need to deliver YOUR internet TV service. Oh, and by the way, we also support all digital broadcast services on the same platform – digital terrestrial is supported today, digital cable and satellite will be coming later in the year.
Nobody really knows which IPTV service will be the “cash cow” – multicasting live streams, video on demand, progressive download, pre-booked downloads, advanced search service. Why roll the dice with a fixed function system? What happens if you get it wrong? 60% of the investment in an IPTV service is the equipment in the home or hotel room. You really don’t want to get this wrong, do you? With the STMC and IRMC you won’t.
If the service you start to offer is superseded by a more successful service don’t swap out the box – upgrade the software. REMOTELY! If you need to provide a download service and haven’t installed a hard drive in the units, don’t sweat – send the customer a USB hard drive and, hey presto, your service changes. If you need to offer online access in a hotel room from the TV - just enable it.
Flexibility
The STMC amd IRMC have evolved from our decades of experience in the telecommunications and broadcast industries. What we don’t know about video decoding, service deployment and cost of ownership is not worth knowing.
Perhaps this is all starting to sound like a PC? Well, our products certainly offer the flexibility of a PC – but we are firmly planted in the cost profile of a set top box. The STMC isn’t the cheapest IPTV set top on the market, nor the most expensive. What it does offer is the ability to adapt and to be tailored exactly to your service. And, if your service changes, the STMC will change with it. In the hotel room the IRMC enables video on demand services as well as internet access, wireless access and in-room control functions.
Your Way
And if you don’t like one of the standard STMC/IRMC platforms – tell us. Just like Burger King you can have the STMC “Your Way”. CompleteTV offers a full hardware customisation service. Change your media center to add or remove functions and fit into a different form factor – it’s one of the ways CompleteTV is unique. We believe in the power of your service brand, not ours. What makes us proud is having our products used at the heart of the widest range of IPTV services. We don’t need our name on the box to do that.
Compare and Contrast
So, if you are out shopping for IPTV set top boxes please look at the rest, whether they are designed in Asia, Europe or the US. Then, once you realise that the only thing that differentiates them is price, come and talk to us.
We can’t promise to match the price of the cheapest Asian developed fixed function set top box. And, if you can 100% guarantee that your IPTV service will never change – go buy that one.
However, if you have any doubts about the future direction of your IPTV service, or if your business plans include expansion into new service areas, then do yourself a favour – consider us.
The STMC and IRMC from CompleteTV – the world’s most advanced set top media solutions for the internet generation.
