French ISP to launch IPTV on Microsoft platform

Club Internet, a French ISP that is part of the Deutsche Telekom Group, has announced plans to launch an IPTV service later this month that will be the first such service in France to be based on Microsoft TV's IPTV Edition platform. The service, which will be part of a triple-play offering, will be based on a hard disk-equipped set-top box from Linksys. Club Internet says that the service will be HD-ready, and will be designed to supplement free-to-air digital terrestrial television. According to the company, it will provide multichannel TV, over 1,100 hours of VOD and SVOD programming, PVR functionality with 50 hours of recording capacity, instantaneous channel-changing, picture-in-picture capability, and a two-week EPG that will allow viewers to search for programs by actors' names and other criteria, while continuing to watch programming. Equipped with 1,000 VOD and SVOD programs and 150 TV programs, Club Internet television service will provide the consumer with real added value thanks to its user-friendly interface. With this new generation of digital television, Club Internet is revolutionizing IPTV and inventing television on-demand.