Siemens Communications announced Sept. 22 that Croatian TV viewers with a broadband connection and set-top box can enjoy MaxTV offered by Croatian T-com, a Deutsche Telekom subsidiary. For the country’s new IPTV, Siemens claims to have set up the turnkey technology and integrated it into the carrier’s network.

Croatian T-com customers can use an electronic program guide to select from 13 Croatian and about 40 international channels. Movies also areavailable through video on demand.

According to Siemens, the carrier can offer customers high picture quality based on the new H.264 compression standard — corresponding to MPEG-4. Despite claiming to take up little bandwidth, H.264 provides quality reproduction of TV programs and videos over IP networks. Customers can also access the Internet through their TVs; Siemens predicts that they will eventually be able to record broadcasts on equipment either on their own premises or provided via the carrier’s network.

The IPTV package is based on the Siemens’ Surpass Home Entertainment product; Siemens says its IPTV system is a turnkey for Croatian T-Com, which includes management systems for all the applications, digital rights management, and the integration of different manufacturers’ set-top boxes. The middleware, which enables communication between the network and the set-top box, is provided by Myrio.