IPTV Case Studies

Landesbank Baden-Württemberg

Several years ago Klicktv installed a TV distribution system in the London City Point offices of international bank Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW), one of the five largest banks in Germany. The requirement was for 16 traders to have access to up to 16 news channels with the channels displayed as windows on the dealers' PC screens. In addition LBBW wanted a system which operated over spare structured cabling which was already installed. Klicktv supplied a TV over Cat5 system which distributes TV as Audio/Video signals over Cat5 cabling and the system operated satisfactorily for several years.

When LBBW came to expand its dealer room to more than double its size, Klicktv suggested an IPTV solution should be considered as an alternative to the incremental expansion of the TV over Cat5 system. The benefits in terms of flexibility are support for an unlimited number or users, choice of more channels, control of which channels are streamed and straightforward user moves by eliminating the need for repatching structured cabling and moving receivers. Quality is improved and because fewer satellite and Freeview Set Top Boxes are required a much more compact comms room installation results.

The final installation comprised Exterity TV Gateways to receive both Freeview terrestrial channels and Hotbird satellite channels and MPEG2 encoders to provide access to encrypted channels from Sky. Control of the entire system is by a browser based, password protected, management interface from any PC.

A network switch providing IGMP query function was added to the network and the TV streams were configured to coexist with Bloomberg and Reuters streaming news services.

On its website LBBW describes itself as "a bank that thinks ahead" - a philosophy which is reflected in its dealing room installation. When LBBW expands again, new dealer positions will have access to high quality streaming TV services as soon as they are connected to the network but exactly which channels can be viewed at any particular position will be under the control of the dealer room manager from his desktop PC.