Technology > in focus
Digital TV Europe
April 2010
Technology in focus
Infrastructure equipment and product news for digital media distribution
In Brief
OSN chooses Harmonic
OSN, the new name for Middle Eastern pay-TV operator Orbit Showtime, has deployed Harmonic’s digital headend solutions. OSN selected Harmonic’s Electra 8000 multi- channel universal encoder, to deliver a new HD service, as well as for an upgrade of its existing standard definition channel line- up from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4. As part of the network upgrade, OSN also implemented Harmonic’s ProStream 1000 stream processing platform for bulk scrambling and descram- bling, and to monitor and con- trol the entire video service.
Telenor chooses Irdeto
Conditional access specialist Irdeto has implemented a cus- tomer care and billing solution for pay-TV operator Telenor’s service in Denmark. Irdeto said the solution will be rolled out in Sweden, Norway and Finland in the next few months.
Conax partners with Tivo
Conditional access specialist Conax has announced that it has partnered with DVR compa- ny Tivo to launch a DVB set-top platform. The companies will put TiVo technology, including its integration of IP-delivered video, into an off-the-shelf pack- age that can be deployed by operators using Conax-certified platforms in areas including Scandinavia, mainland Europe and India.
Road to CMAP laid out at Cable Congress
European cable industry technol- ogists are lining up to support the next-generation cable architec- ture proposals unveiled by US cable giant Comcast in February. The Comcast proposals were the principal topic of a popular technology session at Cable Congress in Brussels in February. The Comcast architecture is
designed to address the migra- tion of services to narrowcast channels thanks to the success of video-on-demand and the deploy- ment (in the US) of switched digi- tal video. This has led to an increase in the number of QAM channels per service group in a network and a concomitant demand for denser edge QAM devices and CMTS gear. To solve the problem, Comcast has teamed up with industry ven-
dors to develop a next-generation headend platform, as part of a next-generation architecture that can deliver a much higher num- ber of narrowcast digital and IP services at reduced cost and with reduced energy consumption, as well as to serve a variety of access networks including fibre as well as HFC. The headend platform, known
as the converged multiservice access platform (CMAP), is the key component, implementing CMTS and edge QAM functions in an integrated design and envisag- ing much higher density, with a vastly increased number of QAM channels delivered per port. “Part of the objective is for
Comcast to bring this into a glob- al initiative,” said Stan Brovont, senior vice-president of market-
Brovont: CMAP will be a global initiative.
ing and business development at broadband technology provider Arris Group, at Cable Congress. EuroCableLabs is taking part in
order to ensure that a European version of the specification takes into account specifically European requirements such as DVB-C2, the new version of the DVB cable broadcast standard that could see a bandwidth gain of between 35-65% over the existing standard, which was also a key topic of discussion at this year’s Cable Congress.
Google moves into compression ADB demos 3D
On2’s VP7 and VP8 video
Google has acquired video com- pression technology company On2 Technologies for US$106m (€78m). The deal is expected to close later this year. On2 provides compression
technologies to deliver video con- tent for desktop and mobile appli- cations. Customers include Adobe, Nokia, Sony and Brightcove.
Google has not unveiled its
plans for On2’s technology, beyond saying it is “committed to innovation in video quality on the web, and we believe that On2 Technologies’ team and technolo- gy will help us further that goal”.
codecs are seen as possible rivals to H.264. On2 has claimed that VP7 provides better quality than H.264 at the same bitrate. The acquisition has attracted
some comment. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has called on Google to use its mar- ket power to establish the stan- dardisation of online video follow- ing its acquisition of On2. In an open letter, the internet lobby group has called on Google to release the patents of On2’s video codec, VP8, under a royal- ty-free licence and push it out to users of YouTube.
Set-top supplier ADB used Cable Congress in Brussels to demon- strate a 3D TV user guide that can run on its existing boxes to selected customers and press. The guide encompasses a wide range of functions including channel browsing, video-on- demand, DVR and interactive applications, all in 3D. CEO François Pogodalla said
that, because the guide is MHP- based, it can be used with its existing 5720-series devices. The EPG could be applied to 3D serv- ices, sitting alongside a 2D ver- sion of the same guide, on any MHP or tru2way service.
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