Harmonic's ProStream™ 8000 Digital Mosaic Solution, the world's first all-digital mosaic generation system, enables operators to generate a navigation screen with multiple SD video thumbnails and a still image or video elementary screen as a background. The solution provides a simple, flexible and cost-effective IP-based architecture for national/local channel navigation, on-demand promotions, in-band messaging services, sports/news split-screens and more. By receiving and producing content through Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) I/O interfaces, mosaic video output can be generated without additional decoders or encoders. The ProStream 8000 is deployed with top middleware clients and integrates easily into any set-top box environment.

The system is a single rack unit (1-RU) PC-based platform that decodes and resizes embedded videos to produce video tiles or thumbnails. It also constructs a single MPEG/IP transport stream that includes a single video stream, up to 20 audio channels and the associated metadata.

The ProStream 8000 is managed via a simple Web-based application that enables dynamic construction of the output by connecting to the platform and downloading the active configuration or loading a saved configuration. All updates to the layout, size and number of video thumbnails are instantly applied to the ProStream 8000 output, enabling the operator to design the output in real time. The ability to copy and paste existing thumbnails speeds up deployment of new layouts. In addition, the configuration may be fine-tuned in offline mode and saved for loading at another time.

The ProStream 8000 can also embed custom metadata associated with each thumbnail. The standard SPTS metadata output includes the thumbnail positioning and associated MPEG structure of each embedded video and audio channel. Two thousand characters of additional program-specific information may also be added for decoding at the subscriber's set-top-box.

Key Applications

• Channel Summary - The ProStream 8000 creates a new user experience by allowing viewers to simultaneously review their favorite channels or themes and then go directly to their channel of choice. The solution allows the operator to showcase channel groups such as VOD services, sports, news and pay-per-view movies.
• Local/Regional Customization - Utilizing the ProStream 8000 solution as part of an all digital architecture increases service customization. For example, national feeds can be picked up by regional ProStream 8000 systems and channel overlays constructed at each hub, or national news can be overlaid with local news. And, these services can be managed from the regional or national facility.
• Digital Radio - Since many alternate audio channels can be sent within the SPTS program, the ProStream 8000 can become a digital “radio station” for your subscribers. While an advertising or promotional video or graphic is in the visual background, CD-quality audio programmed by the local radio stations or the system operator is delivered to the listener.