The Cisco man now in overall charge of NDS has set out how the company’s recently acquired technology will fit with its existing product portfolio.
“We have some middleware, the Videoscape voyager family, but that was not where we were taking things. NDS obviously brings all the MediaHighway sets of middleware, so there’s a product roadmap right now to bring those together,” explained Jesper Anderson, general manager, service provider video technology.
Anderson stressed that Cisco’s dual role as a technology provider and set-top box manufacturer would not be affected. “NDS has strong relationships with non-Cisco set-top box manufacturers just like Cisco has strong relationships in the CPE area.” He explained that a ‘firewall’ would be put in between the two businesses to prevent conflict.
The roadmap that is planned to be revealed before the end of the year could lead to a ‘merger’ of the two unified headend systems. According to customer demand NDS CA could be used in tandem with Cisco’s own Powerkey DRM.
