Thomson is finally ready to make a run at the U.S. middleware market, the video giant said at this year’s NAB Show.

That could be good news for Tier 2 and Tier 3 telcos in the United States, who have lately complained about what they see as limited middleware options.

Making the Thomson push even more compelling is the company’s newly announced 4Mb/s MPEG-4 solution for delivering HDTV.

“We are offering an end-to-end IPTV solution from the encoding platforms right down to the set-top box,” said Mark Marinkovich, director of market development for North America for both IPTV and mobile TV at Thomson. The only thing the company doesn’t offer is conditional access (CA), which it normally gets from Veramatrix, he said.

While Thomson has 1.3 million subscribers on its middleware in Europe, including at France Telecom, the company needed extra time to make modifications in the product for the U.S. market, Marinkovich said. Those included emergency alert notification capabilities.

“We are now actively marketing the system, through Falcon IP/Complete, a systems integrator for Tier 2 and Tier 3 companies, and through talking to a number of customers on our own,” he added. Marinkovich said he was aware of the growing discontent among early IPTV users and is discussing replacing some existing middleware.

“The biggest obstacle there is that most of the companies don’t want to have to replace the set-top boxes,” he said. “We are working with to support Amino [STBs] there.”

In addition, Thomson will integrate with existing CA providers other than its preferred supplier, Veramatrix, Marinkovich said.

The company provides HD, personal video recording and a 20-channel mosaic display generator that looks like a single channel to the operator but functions as multiple channels for the consumer.

One other advantage Thomson is touting is a single management system for its IPTV and mobile TV systems that can work to the benefit of telecom service providers wanting to provide both.