Cologne, Germany— Pace Micro Technology plc, following on a big May 27 set-top purchase agreement announced by Comcast Corp., said last week UnitedGlobalCom Inc. picked Pace as a key vendor for an upcoming digital-video rollout in the Netherlands.
Pace also said it was displaying a new digital video recording set-top developed for the Premiere satellite-TV service in Germany at the ANGA Cable convention here.
UPC Broadband, a UGC-owned MSO, expects to begin a large-scale digital rollout project in the Netherlands in the fourth quarter of 2005, Pace said. UPC Broadband expects to deploy more than 2 million digital set-tops boxes with related middleware, security and conditional access systems as part of that Dutch rollout.
UGC picked Pace’s DC621 set-top for the initial rollout. It has a built in EuroDOCSIS 2.0 cable modem, dual processors, 240 MHz main CPU, 32 bit cable modem processor, and dual tuner architecture. It can also be used to deliver video over DOCSIS, Pace said.
The big Comcast agreement, Pace said, is expected to generate $375 million to $550 million in set-top sales over a three-year period based on the type of Pace boxes Comcast orders.
The new agreement, which supercedes an earlier set-top box purchase agreement between the companies, enables Comcast to buy a variety of Pace boxes, including the recently announced Tahoe HD DVR set-top box, Pace said.
The purchases are subject to Comcast’s acceptance of the boxes and other conditions contained in the agreement.
Comcast also agreed to license Pace’s EngineWare software platform and related set-top technology and to work with Pace on the joint development of next-generation set-top boxes and related technologies.
