Photo: R. Loewenthal

[Via Satellite 10-11-13] Media Networks Latin America, Unotel Telecom and NAGRA have signed an agreement for the launch of a new pay-TV offering in Brazil by the first quarter of 2014. The new service will be initially offered to the 4 million broadband subscriber base of the shareholders and partners of Unotel, with an aggressive growth plan taking advantage of the main sport events that will be hosted in Brazil in the next few years – the FIFA World Soccer Cup in 2014 and the Summer Olympics in 2016.

“Our partners will now be able to offer triple play – broadband, voice and video – to their existing broadband customers, allow us to be more competitive and rapidly grow our subscriber base thanks to a complete pay-TV solution,” said Orlando Ferreira Neto, president of Unotel. “We are very glad to materialize the dream of many small and medium regional operators with this agreement.”

The new offering will feature a hybrid digital set-top box enabling the delivery of IP, satellite and digital terrestrial services with content secured by NAGRA’s content protection technology (NAGRA MediaAccess). It will also be the first commercial deployment of NAGRA’s OpenTV 5 middleware over the Media Networks platform in Brazil, with, in future, the possibility of supporting GINGA applications to enable broadcaster interactivity with Unotel subscribers through its free-to-air TV signals. Additionally, with the connection of an external hard disk, the device will automatically convert into a digital recorder.