Mitsubishi Rayon and Firecomms to demonstrate IPTV optical fibre home network

March 7, 2008 – Mitsubishi Rayon and Irish firm Firecomms are collaborating to provide a live demonstration of an IPTV home network using ultra-thin Plastic Optical Fibre (POF) at the IPTV World Forum, to be held in London next month.

The multi-room demonstration includes several new devices working together to transmit multiple streams of high-definition and standard-definition IPTV signals across a Fast Ethernet network comprised entirely of POF.  The demonstration will involve POF cable provided by Mitsubishi Rayon and several POF-compatible devices that make use of Firecomms’ OptoLock plugless fibre optic transceivers.  These POF-compatible devices will include an IPTV gateway from Motorola, an IPTV set-top box from Digisoft, a Media Converter from NetGear, and a Self Install POF Kit from Technetix.

“The number of key electronics companies contributing products to this demonstration is a testament to the growth of POF over the last year,” said Hugh Hennessy, Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing for Firecomms.  “With data rates of up to one Gigabit, and assured quality of service to every device in the residence, POF is proving itself to be the most robust technology for 100 Mbps Optical Ethernet and 250 Mbps Optical FireWire IPTV applications in the home.”

Advantages of POF include “garden hose” connectivity, immunity to electrical noise, and easy troubleshooting via the use of an eye-safe visible red light for data transmission.