ATIS IPTV Metadata Standards Enable Transport of Critical Information

ATIS Releases Specifications for Emergency Alerts and Electronic Program Guide

July 31, 2008, Washington – ATIS today announced that the ATIS Interoperability IPTV Forum (IIF) released two metadata specifications to add to its suite of leading global IPTV requirements. The two new standards, the IPTV Electronic Program Guide (EPG) Metadata Specification ( ATIS-0800020) and the IPTV Emergency Alert System (EAS) Metadata Specification ( ATIS-0800012) both enable the transport of critical information to customers.

The IPTV Electronic Program Guide (EPG) Metadata Specification offers IPTV users the ability to access information about a practically limitless amount of programming transported over an IP-network. A scalable solution, the EPG standard partitions large amounts of information into manageable quantities. The convenient, unified view permits a consumer to identify and retrieve random yet highly detailed content-related information and makes possible navigation, selection, and acquisition of content from a variety of different content, service and network providers.

“The vast number of IPTV channels can be overwhelming to a user, but the IPTV EPG standard realizes the business-driven need to deliver IPTV service to the consumer in a practical manner,” stated Susan Miller, President and CEO of ATIS. “The EPG standard is a critical component of the end-to-end IPTV standards solutions created in the IIF.

A second recently released standard, the IPTV EAS Metadata Specification, with the earlier released Emergency Alert Service Provisioning Specification ( ATIS-0800012), will support compliance with federal mandates for radio and television broadcast and digital cable. In adapting the EAS to IPTV service, the ATIS IIF supports the government's direction to move to the XML-based Common-Alerting-Protocol (CAP). The XML-based solution put forth in the IPTV EAS Metadata standard implements the concepts that have traditionally been envisioned for handling Emergency Alerts in video service and provides the service provider with improved control over how the alert is presented to the user.

“With the publication of the IPTV EAS standard, ATIS IIF makes expanding the traditional level of services possible to realize features that have been visualized but not yet implemented in incumbent services,” added Ms. Miller.

IPTV Emergency Alert System (EAS) Metadata Specification ( ATIS-0800012) and IPTV Electronic Program Guide (EPG) Metadata Specification ( ATIS-0800020) are available through the ATIS Document Center at: https://www.atis.org/docstore/default.aspx.

About ATIS IIF
The ATIS IPTV Interoperability Forum (IIF) is recognized globally as the leading developer of requirements, standards, and specifications for Internet Protocol Television, or IPTV.

More than 40 ATIS member companies are actively engaged in ATIS’ IPTV standardization efforts through the ATIS IIF, including Alcatel-Lucent, AT&T, BT, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia Siemens Networks, Nortel, Qwest, Sun Microsystems, and Verizon, among others.

For more information about the ATIS IIF, please visit www.atis.org/iif.

About ATIS

ATIS is a technical planning and standards development organization that is committed to providing leadership for, and the rapid development and promotion of, worldwide technical and operations standards for information, entertainment and communications technologies using a pragmatic, flexible and open approach. Participants from more than 300 communications companies are active in ATIS’ 22 industry committees and Incubator Solutions Program. www.atis.org