OKI develops audience rating information system for IPTV operators

June 30, 2008 - OKI Electric Industry, a Japanese telecommunications equipment manufacturer, has developed a product called "Audience Rating Information System", which collects viewership data to enable IPTV operators to improve their services.

The new product will be offered to the Japanese market, and collects data such as user preferences and viewer history (with the authorisation of users). The system will collect the viewership data in the form of an "audience rating library" on the user's device, which will then be encrypted and sent to a database server at the IPTV distribution centre. The data can then be printed out as viewership reports which service providers can offer to programme producers.

"We are pleased to introduce OKI's Audience Rating Information System using our eVideo technology to efficiently deliver high quality video over IP networks," said Masa Saito, General Manager of IP Systems Division at OKI. "We have been proposing the technology to handle audience rating information to ASTAP, Asia's communication standard organisation and FG-IPTV in ITU, the UN's agency for information and communication technologies, as we believe open standards are important in improving IPTV service and technologies. We will continue our activities within IPTV-GSI, the IPTV standardisation initiative, to promote international standardisation to enrich IPTV services."

The system will be added to a product lineup that includes Oki MediaServer, a video distribution server for IPTV, set-top boxes and home gateways.