NDS and Frontier Silicon to Collaborate on Content Protection for Mobile Digital Television

NDS and Frontier Silicon to Collaborate on Content Protection for Mobile Digital Television

LONDON, August 30/PRNewswire/ -- NDS, the leading provider of secure content delivery technology for digital pay-TV, and Frontier Silicon - the leading fabless manufacturer of semiconductors for mobile digital television (DVB-H & T-DMB) and DAB digital radio products - have signed a collaborative agreement for joint development and marketing of secure content protection and digital rights management (DRM) for mobile digital TV and DAB digital radio.

The agreement between the two companies is expected to address the security concerns that content providers have in releasing premium content into the high growth MDTV (mobile digital television) and DAB radio markets. NDS and Frontier Silicon will develop a secure end-to-end solution with content securely encoded at the head-end, transmitted and securely received or consumed by users with appropriate digital rights. The tight coupling of NDS' content protection technology, mVideoGuard(R), to Frontier Silicon's hardware will ensure content providers get one of the most secure mobile TV and radio delivery mechanisms in the industry.

The companies will demonstrate such secure downloads with NDS' mVideoGuard conditional access (CA), DRM and electronic program guide (EPG) solutions over Frontier Silicon's T-DMB, DVB-H and DAB product platforms. Initial prototype platforms will be showcased at IBC on stand number 6.006 from 9th-13th September in Amsterdam.

Anthony Sethill, CEO of Frontier Silicon commented, "In such a high growth and potentially lucrative mobile TV market, the content download business model will only be viable if chipset and conditional access/digital rights management developers work closely together. Our collaboration with NDS is therefore an exciting prospect as we'll be working towards developing the industry's most secure mobile TV and radio solution - combining the advanced security features of the NDS mVideoGuard technology and our own chipsets for T-DMB, DVB-H and DAB ."

Carmi Bogot, VP business development at NDS, added, "We foresee a big potential from our partnership with Frontier Silicon across the various digital multimedia technologies for TV and radio. Frontier's unique multi-standard T-DMB/DVB-H approach to mobile TV on top of the company's leading position in DAB/T-DMB chipsets, gives NDS opportunities to work with appropriate partners to develop the secure delivery solution that content providers can rely upon, over multiple broadcast technologies."

Editor's notes:

About NDS

NDS Group plc (NASDAQ/ Euronext Brussels: NNDS), a majority owned subsidiary of News Corporation, is a leading supplier of open end-to-end digital pay TV solutions for the secure delivery of entertainment and information to television set-top boxes and IP devices. See www.nds.com for more information about NDS.

About Frontier Silicon

Frontier Silicon is an award-winning company at the forefront of the digital multimedia revolution with a range of semiconductor solutions for mobile digital television, digital TV and digital radio.

The company develops and delivers both the broadcast signal receiver modules and digital processing circuits as individual chips and complete system modules to leading consumer electronics and mobile phone brands.

As a fabless semiconductor business, Frontier Silicon's core products include complete DAB modules, DVB-T solutions, DMB (digital multimedia broadcasting) solutions, and the underlying system-on-chip (SoC) devices and receiver chips.

Key customers for the company's products include consumer electronic, automotive entertainment and PDA/mobile phone manufacturers such as Bang & Olufsen, Cambridge Audio, Goodmans, Grundig, Hitachi, Ministry of Sound, Philips, PURE Digital, Roberts Radio, Samsung, Sharp, Sony and TEAC. Frontier Silicon has won a number of awards and its products have also enabled award-winning consumer products. The company's awards include the Fabless Semiconductor Association's start-up to watch award, PricewaterhouseCoopers hottest technology company of 2004 award, the World Economic Forum's technology pioneers to watch 2005, and the Tornado T100 award for one of the best-performing and innovative high-tech private companies. For more information visit www.frontier-silicon.com.

Source: Frontier Silicon Ltd

Contact: Anthony Sethill, CEO, Frontier Silicon, Tel: +44-(0)-1923-474200 Fax: +44-(0)1923-202251 Email: press@frontier-silicon.com Margot Field, Director, Public Relations, NDS, Tel: +44-(0)-20-8476-8158 Mobile: +44-(0)788-191-8158

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