BskyB, Midland Bank and Matsushita of Japan would own the rest. BSkyB wants to launch digital programming by the end of the year. According to NDS' Lucy Gallagher, there is a lot of interest in the product, but wouldn't say what clients the company has lined up so far. The product will be available in the third quarter of this year, she said. Features include a scheduler, multiplex manager, conditional access, a powerful graphical user interface, and receive and control functions.
Users can start with one channel and migrate up to eight channels.
In addition, the Baby Bear system allows simple porting to multiple scrambling methods and transmission formats, as well as satellite channel tuning for hopping between satellites. NDS provides conditional access systems for such clients as DirecTV and the Sky DTH alliance in Latin America.