SmarDTV, part of the Kudelski Group, has announced the availability of a new Conditional Access Module (CAM) for Italy and is currently demonstrating the product at the National Digital Terrestrial TV Conference in Torino. The SmarCAM Italia offers TV viewers who have purchased credit on Mediaset Premium, La7 Cartapiù, and Pangea the ability to watch their programmes directly on their digital-ready TV sets without the use of an external set-top box.
The SmarCAM Italia supports up to two smart cards simultaneously – one of standard size and one of SIM size. The end-user can view content from multiple services as conveniently as changing channels without having to exchange smart cards or CAMs.
As SmarCAM Italia is plugged directly in the digital TV using the industry standard DVB-CI interface, the signal is always in digital format. No analogue conversion or interface is necessary. This provides an important improvement over traditional set-top box connectivity that often uses SCART connectivity. For TV manufacturers, this combination enables the TV to become fully pay-TV capable without any effort spent to embed the conditional access security code directly into the TV.
Over the past two years SmarDTV has worked closely with the major TV set manufacturers, the Italian broadcasters Mediaset, Telecom Italia Media, and Pangea, and with the DGTVi committee representing all TV broadcasters in Italy. The result of these efforts is not only the SmarCAM Italia product, but also a set of implementation guidelines, an interoperability partner program, and a broadcaster certification process.
