Avinity, Virgin to demo new interactive TV

Virgin Media is to team up with Avinity at this year's Cable Congress to demonstrate new interactive TV technology that is designed to overcome the video rendering limitations of set top boxes.

Avinity's system streams user interfaces and rich media content - including Flash applications - over the network, instead of relying on graphical capabilities built-in to set top boxes. The technology would allow new services to be deployed without requiring cable operators such as Virgin to spend large amounts of capital on replacing existing set top boxes.

"This approach to application deployment greatly reduces cost and complexity of launching and managing rich media content for both content provider and operator," said Avinity CEO Ronald Brockmann. "Existing set-top boxes support new user experiences as well, greatly reducing the capital expenditure for the operator."