Televisa to Deploy TANDBERG Television MPEG-4 AVC HD and SD Systems for North American Broadcast First

High picture quality MPEG-4 AVC distribution solution to deliver programming to Televisa broadcast affiliates via satellite using DVB-S2

Atlanta .- TANDBERG Television, part of the Ericsson Group (NASDAQ:ERIC), today announced that its MPEG-4 AVC video encoding and distribution systems have been chosen by Grupo Televisa, S.A. de C.V. (“Televisa”; NYSE:TV; BMV:TLEVISA CPO) to deliver programming across Mexico via satellite using DVB-S2 8PSK modulation. Migrating from MPEG-2, Televisa will become the first broadcaster in North America to move to an all MPEG-4 AVC distribution solution for its broadcast affiliates. Using the same amount of satellite bandwidth, the TANDBERG Television MPEG-4 AVC system allows Televisa to simultaneously distribute both HD and SD content whereas before they were only sending SD.

Televisa operates three broadcast networks in Mexico, channels 2, 5, and 9; via 258 affiliated stations throughout the country. The company also produces 30 television channels under 14 different brands for pay-TV systems delivered to more than 18 million pay-TV subscribers in more than 48 countries, including Mexico, the US, Ocean’a, Canada, and countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Europe. The use of TANDBERG Television’s MPEG-4 AVC encoding and decoding systems will enable Televisa to achieve very efficient bandwidth utilization for both HD and SD programming. The systems more than halve the bit rate required by MPEG-2 while protecting and maintaining the picture quality of each video stream.

“We have a well earned reputation for demanding exceptionally high picture quality. So when we decided to explore migrating from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 AVC, we held a competitive shoot-out to determine if any of the systems in the market would meet our needs,” said, William Aguirre, Televisa’s Chief of Satellite Broadcasting. “TANDBERG Television has a track record of delivering industry leading compression performance and we selected its solutions based on best-in-class video quality and the robustness of its encoding platform. It’s more than being able to double the number of simultaneous transmissions over the same satellite bandwidth, with the TANDBERG MPEG-4 AVC solution we can also better manage the delivery and quality of those transmissions.”

The solution selected by Televisa features the TANDBERG Director, an all-in-one digital distribution control solution offering highly secure conditional access and control of the receiver network. Director manages and controls TANDBERG Television’s market-leading receivers designed for high-quality Contribution and Distribution services. Director updates both HD and SD receivers using over-the-air downloads of the latest software code, without requiring site visits. This can be done to one receiver, a specific group, or the whole receiver population. Built for mission-critical, real-time HD and SD content delivery for point-to point and point-to-multipoint connections, Director’s GUI enables a single system view of the entire receiver population, allowing operators to make changes on the fly.

“After 10 years of working with Televisa, it’s an honor to have them renew their confidence in us and select our solution for this North American broadcast first,” said Al Nuñez, President of TANDBERG Television Americas. “Our first-to-market move in HDTV advanced compression technology has uniquely placed us in a position to provide next generation systems today with bandwidth savings and high video quality for broadcasters like Televisa.”

To further increase bandwidth utilization and provide high video quality, the solution includes TANDBERG Television’s award winning Reflex’ system and PREKOR’ system. Enabling the addition of up to 30% more channels without increasing bandwidth or sacrificing image quality, Reflex is a field proven deployed statistical multiplexing solution already in use with thousands of channels worldwide. Reflex offers the capability for more channels and better image quality with no increase in bandwidth. PREKOR is a dynamic pre-correction system which enables broadcasters, like Televisa, to gain maximum performance from a satellite transponder by employing transponder linearization techniques.

The complete MPEG-4 AVC solution selected by Televisa includes the TANDBERG EN8090 HD and EN8030 SD MPEG-4 AVC encoders, MX8400 IP multiplexers with Reflex statistical multiplexing, the nCompass Control management system, TANDBERG Director distribution control solution, SM6620 modulators with Prekor for the broadcast headend and award-winning RX1290 professional receivers for the affiliate sites. The systems are supported locally throughout the country.

TANDBERG Television also provides the satellite broadcast network distribution systems for other broadcasters in North America, including ABC, CBC, CTV, MyNetworkTV, NBCU, and Telemundo.