Imago turns to IP TV

Distributor Imago has added an IP TV offering to its range by signing a deal with Amino for its IP TV software, systems and set-top box products

Distributor Imago has added an IP TV offering to its range by signing a deal with Amino for its IP TV software, systems and set-top box products.

Imago will focus sales of the AmiNet series on its specialist reseller channel for the UK, with particular emphasis on education, retail, leisure, health and home entertainment.

The AmiNet series includes Ethernet for network or inter-unit communications and a powerful system processor with MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 decoding functionality.

Peter Nice, marketing manager at Imago, said: “Amino has a number of large telco-type customers around the world that it deals with directly, but it started getting more enquiries from smaller resellers and integrators wanting smaller orders with a short timescale. We’ve been brought in to handle the smaller customers and those that need products quicker than the usual six to 12 week lead time.

“It tends to be specialist resellers that operate in IP TV, but we will be offering packages so that resellers can sell complete solutions.”

Colin Farquhar, chief executive of IP TV networking vendor Exterity, said: “This is a very positive move for the IP TV market. Opportunity and growth is certainly there, and resellers need to take stock of how they are going to get into this area.

“It’s interesting that Imago is initially targeting resellers with the ability to do integration work at a middleware level to create complete solutions. We have found that some solutions need experienced web and software developers to supply what the customer wants. As a manufacturer we certainly have a channel that can rise to that challenge.”

But Rob Bamforth, principal analyst at Quocirca, was sceptical. “The question is, do enterprises and consumers really want IP TV? There doesn’t seem to be any pent-up demand for it at the moment,” he said.