Oslo, Norway & Budapest, Hungary - October 20, 2008
At the opening of IPTV World Forum Eastern Europe 2008, Appear TV (stand: 32), a global provider of next-generation head-ends for broadcast and IP television, and HFC Technics, a system integrator and Appear TV partner based in Budapest, Hungary, are pleased to announce the integration and commercial deployment of the Appear TV SC2000 IPTV head-end into the Smart-End end-to-end IPTV and Cable solution. The HFC Technics Smart-End solution powered by the Appear TV SC2000 is already providing three operators with more than 60 SD and HD television services.

Smart-End provides Hungary's small-to-medium sized Cable and IPTV operators with a full end-to-end Digital TV solution, which simplifies launching IPTV services and transitioning analogue cable services to digital. The Smart-End and Appear TV SC2000 combination is also ideal for operators looking to move to a hybrid IPTV and cable architecture. HFC Technics plans to rollout the solution to a total of nine operators within the coming year, the system includes best-of-breed network equipment and is integrated with comprehensive subscriber, conditional access, hardware management tools and set-top boxes.

Within the HFC Technics Smart-End, Appear TV performs all content aggregation, management and scrambling functions. 'The flexibility of the Appear TV solution in such an efficient footprint certainly makes it the leading solution in the marketplace today,' comments Atilla Schnobl, CTO of HFC Technics. 'Its redundancy options enables us to provide our clients with 100% uptime.'

'We are pleased to be a part of HFC Technics' Smart-End project', comments Thomas Lind, Technical Director of Appear TV. 'For owners of small to medium sized networks, launching Digital TV services presents a variety of technical challenges. The collaboration of Appear TV and HFC Technics significantly reduces the costs and risks involved, and ensures that an operators' infrastructure has the flexibility to meet all future challenges.'

About the SC2000
The Appear TV SC2000 is the most powerful reception and streaming solution available for television network operators. The SC2000/SC2100 can be configured as a turn-key head-end, or as a standalone solution for intensive service processing applications. Applications include:

Content Aggregation
Reception and descrambling of multiple services from multiple sources.
Professional Descrambler
Multi-service CAM-based, and high performance AES 'Bulk', descrambling.
DVB and AES Scrambler
Fully featured and high performance scrambling for all video streaming applications.

About Appear TV

Appear TV is based in Oslo, Norway. The company produces world-class equipment that enables operators to deliver professional broadcast services to millions of users around the globe. The company is dedicated to developing reliable, revenue-generating and innovative solutions for operators looking to deliver real-time content to the home. Appear TV head-ends are designed for modularity, high density, and flexibility. www.appeartv.com

About HFC Technics & the Smart-End

HFC Technics was founded in December, 2000 by partners with more than 10 years professional experience in the broadcast television industry. HFC Technics' Smart-End is a Turnkey Digital Head-End Solution with IP based content acquisition and distributed conditional access system, feeding partner networks via Budapest Internet Exchanges' Gb IP backbone.

Company Site: HFC Technics