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TWST: Can we begin with a brief introduction and overview of NDS Group?

Mr. Medlock: NDS is a leading provider of pay-TV systems. We have two strands of our business. First, we provide the best security system, what’s called conditional access, which protects pay-TV operators’ revenues; in other words, making sure that only subscribers who have actually paid for TV programming get to see it. The second aspect of our business is we develop solutions to pay-TV operators who have gone digital -- things like interactive applications and value-added services that take advantage of a digital TV infrastructure. We started that back in about 1998, and it has become a very big revenue stream for NDS. Certainly, I would say we’ve established ourselves as the world’s leading provider of those sort of solutions for people like QVC and Music Choice, MTV, etc.

TWST: What’s on your business agenda for the next couple of years? What do you see as the main growth opportunities?

Mr. Medlock: Our key challenge is to be successful in penetrating US cable. I mentioned earlier we had won CableVision and we’ve been in active discussion with a number of US cable operators about using our technology; certainly I think we’re hearing very positive statements. I think people in the US now have come to realize that the problem with being stuck with proprietary solutions means that you move very slowly and that you don’t get the advantage of the new technology, and of course, you pay a higher price for set-top boxes. Operators have continually over-promised and under-delivered on their digital service, and that’s given digital a bad name. So my sense is that people are now waking up to that, and are looking to bring in additional conditional-access players alongside their existing supplier. So I see that our big challenge and our key success factor will be winning other cable operators in the US, and we certainly would hope to be successful in that in the next one to two years. The other challenges for NDS are on the platform side as we do have some big projects in the pipeline to deliver over the next one to two years for existing customers in Australia, the Far East, and in Europe. We are also hopeful of winning new customers who are switching from existing conditional-access players. Again, I think there has been recognition in the last 12 to 18 months that piracy is costing people a lot of money and there are a lot of unsecure systems out there. Some of those pay-TV operators in Europe are already looking to change supplier; we’re pretty hopeful of winning some of those.. So that is the challenge on the conditional access side. For the rest of our business, what we call our new technologies side, the interactive applications, etc., we’ve been very successful selling to the channels on BSkyB in the UK, as I mentioned -- people like MTV and Nickelodeon and QVC. We would hope to see other platforms around the world getting to a size and critical mass to really start deploying other interactive applications, where again we would hope to get a significant slice of that market. I mean, we have solutions now for channels where if you want to you can bet on TV, vote, play games, shop, do quizzes. It’s pure interactive, it’s your sports, your news, etc. So, we’ve got a whole range of solutions for digital TV channels wherever they operate, and it’s really a question of making sure that we take advantage of where those opportunities are.