European launch of TANDBERG Television IP-based cable system

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

ANGA sees first European outings for key new cable solutions



Market leading open on-demand solutions showcased



Southampton, UK, – TANDBERG Television (TAT.OL) is launching its next generation IP head-end infrastructure - the iSIS 8000 – into the European cable market at ANGA this week. This complete IP-based architecture is designed to enable cable operators to leverage IP technology both at the network core and in last mile TV delivery. It includes best-in-class MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC and SMPTE VC-1 video encoding and transcoding, new receiver/decoders, the new MX8400 IP multiplexer, the TANDBERG iPlex transrater and the TANDBERG xQ6800 dense QAM modulator. The iSIS 8000 IP solution has been based on over five years of IP development at TANDBERG Television, and brought together under a single control and management system, nCompass.



“The needs of European cable operators are diverse and we are coming to ANGA with the industry’s most comprehensive offering to the cable industry, designed to help analog operators migrate to digital and digital operators to launch compelling on-demand and interactive services,” says Adrian Bell, EMEA and APAC Cable Business Manager at TANDBERG Television. “IP has growing momentum in the European cable market and the question from our customers is not why IP, but when? The launch of our new IP solutions will enable our cable customers to experience the benefits of IP throughout their central and regional head-end infrastructures.”



At the heart of the iSIS 8000 system is TANDBERG Television’s extensive capability in video processing and multiplexing, now further expanded with the addition of the SkyStream iPlex and MediaPlex solutions. New for ANGA is the TANDBERG MX8400 IP Multiplexer, a next generation product designed for central head-end applications such as primary multiplexing for large cable systems. This open standards, IP-based product enables the simplification of systems and with support for up to 4 independent multiplexed outputs from a single unit, eases future expansion and delivers significant reduction in infrastructure costs. Moreover, the combination of ReflexTM statistical multiplexing and advanced multiplexing architectures ensures maximum usage of available bit-rate. TANDBERG Television has always led the market in terms of conditional access integration and has continued this with the iSIS 8000, including a number of DVB Simulcrypt integrations that are available at launch.



Following the acquisition of SkyStream Networks earlier this year TANDBERG Television has integrated the iPlex into the iSIS 8000 system. The iPlex is a flexible video processing platforms capable of MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AVC SD encoding, MPEG-2 SD transrating, MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 AVC transcoding, multiplexing, de-multiplexing, routing and streaming. This extremely flexible platform, now integrated with the TANDBERG nCompass control platform, provides an excellent solution for regional encoding and re-multiplexing as well as transrating and transcoding at the central site.



Other new iSIS 8000 system components and features include:

§ Dual GigE Encoder output - This new interface provides dual GigE outputs in the EN5900 and E5700 encoding ranges for MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC and VC-1. The encoder to multiplexer transport stream data connection has a dedicated high speed IP output and provides full redundancy protection of the transport stream data. The transport stream output from the encoder is transmitted on both outputs simultaneously as a multicast packet stream and full N+M encoder redundancy is provided. The dual GigE Encoder output option card also supports splitting of the encoder multi-program transport stream outputs into separate multicasts – so for example the EN5930’s MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC and PIP programs can all be multicast on separate addresses.

§ TANDBERG RX1290 - the world’s first professional multiformat MPEG-2/MPEG-4 AVC SD/HD decoder will enable network operators and broadcasters to deliver IP streams of standard definition (SD) and high definition (HD) content from studio to studio and across networks to regional head-ends and affiliates.

§ TANDBERG RX5130 Descrambler – the latest generation of the TANDBERG DVB-CA Common Interface Descrambler features satellite and transport stream input, with optional IP output, and is a key component in the turnaround of content into the broadcast head-end. By removing the previous transmission scrambling the RX5130 enables programming to be processed, and re-multiplexed for onward broadcast.

Open on-demand

TANDBERG Television will also be presenting the latest open video on-demand platform (VOD) for the cable market. TANDBERG Television’s open VOD platform has been designed to provide European cable operators with the freedom to choose best of breed technologies and to avoid proprietary architectures with all the associated downsides of vendor lock-in, non-competitive pricing schedules and higher support costs.



The TANDBERG Television VOD solution includes the Xport Producer, OpenStream™ digital services platform and EQ6800 Edge QAM modulator. Xport Producer provides the ability to easily create package for onward delivery to the operators VOD platform. Key features of the system include encoding, metadata creation, editing, validation, packaging, storing and exporting of the content to the on-demand platform.



OpenStream allows cable operators to easily deploy on-demand services using Void servers, applications, billing systems and other system components of their choice. OpenStream’s unique open architecture extends the cable head-end beyond VOD to support television’s next generation of interactive services. The platform today delivers on-demand streams to more than 80 U.S. markets reaching more than 15 million digital subscribers and is currently being deployed by a major European cable operator. In Shanghai, China, Oriental Cable Network has recently become the first Asian operator to deploy OpenStream. The top five U.S. operators to deploy the platform include Comcast, Charter Communications, Time Warner Cable and Adelphia.

About TANDBERG Television

Whether it’s advanced compression systems, on-demand or interactive television, TANDBERG Television delivers the technology and expertise that is moving digital video forward. The company’s award-winning solutions are used by the world’s leading network operators, broadcasters and content owners to deliver new viewer experiences and advertising opportunities. With a broad suite of open, standards-based products, TANDBERG Television offers the highest quality digital TV solutions including IPTV, HDTV, video-on-demand, advertising on-demand, and interactive TV applications to customers in the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East and Africa. For more information, please visit www.tandbergtv.com.


For further information, please contact:
Gay Bell
Tel: +44 20 8964 9149
E-mail: gay@platformpr.com

Contact Information

Gay Bell

TANDBERG Television

Contact via E-mail