The solutions were delivered to Tele Granducato in cooperation with CVE, Sofia’s Italian distributor. They include Sofia Arena® Digital Teletext system and Sofia Backstage® Manager. With Sofia Arena® Digital Teletext a publishing chain was established which enables remote contribution of content by a local newspaper and local advertisers. Sofia Backstage® Manager is used to publish the MHP applications, which include a Launcher and Sofia’s XHTML browser engine, and various content streams to the MHP object carousel, supplied by Strategy and Technology Ltd.

Fabio Daddi, CEO of Tele Granducato, said: “The cooperation between Sofia Digital, CVE as the Italian partner and Tele Granducato allowed us to launch digital terrestrial broadcasts in short time and introduce MHP services easily in order to enrich our programming for the end users in Central Italy. Thanks to Sofia we were able to deploy MHP News service directly from our publishing company Il Messaggero Marittimo and now we are at the forefront of DVB-T in our region.”

“The delivery represents for Sofia Digital a great step forward in the Italian market. We are happy to be shaping the Italian digital terrestrial television landscape together with Tele Granducato”, said Olli Väätäinen, CEO of Sofia Digital.

The Tele Granducato MHP services are on air in the Livorno area in Italy. The services are also show-cased at the IBC 2005 convention in Amsterdam, September 9-13, at Sofia Digital’s booth 2.101.

About Tele Gran Ducato
Tele Granducato is a regional broadcaster in the Tuscany area in Italy. Based in Livorno, they operate two TV channels in digital terrestrial – Tele Granducato 1 and Tele Granducato 2.

About Sofia Digital
Sofia Digital develops and sells products and services that create, manage, and deliver interactive media services available to consumers on TV, Mobile Devices and Internet. Our customers are broadcasters, content providers, operators, and manufacturers.

Sofia Digital is a unique player in the TV Industry that offers a safe migration path from analog to digital television in terms of interactivity, content, and business. Sofia Digital's customers include Antenna Hungaria, Czech Telecom, Helsinki Television, Mediaset, MTV3, Channel four Finland (Nelonen), Nokia, Nordea Bank, ST Microelectronics, SUN Microsystems and Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE).

Contacts
Sofia Digital Ltd

Hannu Anttila
Vice President, Business Development
Tel: +358 50 385 5515
Fax: +358 10 850 5551
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www.sofiadigital.com


CVE – Comteck Video Enterprise

Nicola Di Fabio
Branch Office Manager
Tel: +39 34 80910463
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www.cve.it