Technology > in focus
Digital TV Europe July/August 2010
Technology in focus Infrastructure equipment and product news for digital media distribution In Brief
Qualcomm to sell FLO Qualcomm is looking to sell its mobile TV business MediaFLO as a result of disappointing take up. The company is in talks with a number of firms to sell the entire service including the wireless spectrum that it owns to run the service. Companies including AT&T, Cisco and Comcast are reportedly interest- ed in acquiring the division.
Strong to license Thomson Set-top provider Strong is to license the Thomson brand to distribute a range of high-end and free-to-air satellite, terres- trial, cable and IPTV set-tops in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The Thomson marque is being licensed from Technicolor (the new name for Thomson), which will retain ownership of the brand.
GlobeCast expands net Broadcast services provider GlobeCast has rebranded its international fibre network, now the GlobeCast Backbone Network, which offers intercon- nection to facilities and partners via 32 points of presence, most recently including Johannesburg and São Paulo. GlobeCast said the expanded network aims to provide a cost- effective way for content to be moved quickly and securely around the world, and to allow broadcasters to easily access partners and facilities once the content reaches its destination.
Harmonic to maintain Omneon brand
Harmonic now expects to close its acquisition of Omneon Video Networks towards the end of September, giving the company enhanced ability to compete with end-to-end video equipment providers globally. “We want to maintain all the
elements of the Omneon brand which is number one in its space,” said David Price, vice-president of business development and mar- keting communications at Harmonic. “We will take time to integrate the companies. We don’t want to do anything that will concern the range of cus- tomers that Omneon has today.” The acquisition will create a company with revenues of
US$0.5bn (€0.4bn) and 1,000 employees. Price said there was only one small area of overlap with Harmonic’s products. Omneon’s expertise is on the
production side of video, comple- menting Harmonic’s core compe- tency in contribution and distribu- tion. The company has built on the foundation of its flagship Spectrum servers to develop transcoding and workflow automation products. Geoff Stedman, senior vice-president of marketing and business develop- ment said that the company had built expertise across content ingest, storage, where it had developed APIs that allow the transfer of content to storage
while it is still being recorded, enabling editors to begin working on it within seconds, and playout. Omneon has also developed a
transcoding application called ProXchange, which performs a similar function to Harmonic’s Rhozet Carbon Coder. However, Stedman said that while Rhozet is focused on distribution formats, ProXchange is focused more closely on production formats. “Over time we can bring those products together, [combining] our performance with the breadth of Rhozet,” he said. Harmonic announced the
acquisition of Omneon for approximately US$274m in cash and stock in May.
Bridge to launch rugged test appliance
than alternatives, with the widest possible range of built-in inter- faces for RF, ASI, and IP, full TR101290 alarming and analysis and support for all professional media transportation codecs. “We have seen a lot of interest
Test and measurement specialist Bridge Technologies is planning to use the forthcoming IBC exhi- bition to showcase its new VB12- RF portable monitoring and measuring appliance. The VB12-RF is a portable mon-
itoring/measurement appliance that includes all required broad- cast and IP interfaces in a ‘ruggedised’ chassis with a form factor smaller than a laptop com- puter. According to the company, it is smaller, lighter, and tougher
in this,” said Simen Frostad, CEO of Bridge Technologies. Engineers on the road require equipment that is “ruggedised” rather than easy-to-damage laptops, he said. Demand for IP monitoring equipment from traditional cable and satellite broadcast network providers is growing significantly, according to Frostad. “Suddenly there is a huge influx of tradition- al broadcasters that need a link between IP and RF-based moni- toring,” said Frostad.
Bridge Technologies has sup- plied RF QAM interfaces for its monitoring equipment for some time. The VB262 Dual QAM/8VSB input option card, which will be at IBC, is for complete monitoring in DVB-C or hybrid DVB-C/IP net- works, now with optional built-in spectrum analytics capability for advanced RF analysis. Up to four independent RF inputs can be analysed in one 1RU chassis. The company has provided a COFDM interface for digital-terrestrial equipment and DVB-S QPSK and DVB-S2 for satellite. Frostad said that Bridge tried
to integrate different interfaces into a single platform in order to reduce the amount of equipment necessary for operators to deploy.
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