14 May 2004

The City of Tampere has become the first city in Finland to deploy digital television services using MHP (Multimedia Home Platform). The Digital TV Portal offers news, an event calendar, local bus timetables and web cameras over the city. Sofia Digital is responsible for the UI Design and the technical implementation.

The project has been established in cooperation with Tampere Cable Company as part of their MHP deployment project. The City of Tampere is currently preparing a similar service for the Finnish Terrestrial Network to reach viewers outside cable networks.

Mr. Klaux Nylamo of the City of Tampere said, "We aim to serve our citizens by offering them interesting content in digital TV. Our objective is that we utilize the existing content sources like web content in producing our MHP services. This can be achieved with good cooperation with our technology partners".

Chief Technology Officer of Sofia Digital, Mika Kanerva said, "We are glad that the city of Tampere has chosen our browser platform for their MHP services. This way the existing content is very easy to bring to digital TV. It is also easy to expand the content, for example with various e-Government services".

The Digital TV Portal of Tampere is based on Sofia's Stage XHTML Browser. The content for the services is delivered from existing content management systems and the updates to broadcast stream are automated. The return channel is also in use in some services, for example searching timetables for bus lines.

For more information, please contact:
City of Tampere
Mr. Klaus Nylamo, Project Coordinator, Electronic Services
Tel. +358 50 3488 850

Sofia Digital Oy
Mika Kanerva, CTO
tel. +358 50 385 55 38
press@sofiadigital.fi
www.sofiadigital.com