September 8, 2010

Harmonic Reaches Encoding Milestone

Harmonic has announced that sales orders for its Electra 8000 universal broadcast encoder have surpassed 10,000 channels since its launch in June 2009. This compression solution is deployed by broadcast, satellite, telco and cable operators around the world to power the full spectrum of video services - 3D, HD, SD, MPEG-4 AVC, MPEG-2, and picture-in-picture. Multiple cable MSOs have deployed the Electra 8000 for recently introduced switched digital video (SDV) services, using the Electra’s high quality dual output capability. The Electra 8000 is also compliant with Microsoft’s Mediaroom Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) platform.

At Harmonic's stand at IBC 2010 in Amsterdam, September 10-14, the company will demonstrate superior quality HD and SD video powered by the dense one rack unit (1-RU) Electra 8000, which is capable of encoding up to four channels with simultaneous secondary output. Harmonic will also feature a technology demonstration of simultaneous delivery of mobile and Web video streams from the Electra platform. Other capabilities on display will include integrated broadcast-grade processing features such as SD/HD up-conversion, statistical multiplexing and automatic audio level adjustment.

In other news from Harmonic, the company has announced that its digital video headend solutions have been deployed by On Digital Media (ODM) to power its new TopTV pay TV service in South Africa. The headend system includes Harmonic's Electra 5400 MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) multi-channel encoders and the ProStream 1000 stream processing platform with DiviTrackIP statistical multiplexing. This new solution was implemented for ODM in under two months by African Union Communications, a leading systems integrator and Harmonic reseller in South Africa.

TopTV has a total of 52 channels of which 14 are contributed from South Africa. Using the Harmonic headend system these 14 channels are sent over IP via SEACOM's undersea fiber optic cable and are received at TopTV's teleport in Germany where they are multiplexed with the remaining channels on another Harmonic headend system. The complete 52-channel line-up is then uplinked to the SES World Skies Sirius 4 Ku-band satellite over Africa and delivered to the consumer via a compact set-top box.