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End-to-End Contribution, Satellite Distribution, and Reception Solution Delivers Superior Quality Video, While Lowering TCO and Providing New Revenue Opportunities
“We wanted to upgrade our legacy SD system to deliver free-to-air HD content on TVs and mobile devices. To accomplish this, we needed a powerful infrastructure solution capable of delivering superior-quality video at the lowest possible bit rates,” said Luis Botelho, engineering manager at TV Centro América. “Harmonic provides us with the most efficient solution on the market for delivering breaking news coverage, including live sporting events, with the best possible video quality, while lowering total cost of ownership and opening up new revenue opportunities.”
On the distribution front, Harmonic’s ProView™ 7100 integrated receiver-decoders (IRDs) are used for descrambling and decoding. The IRDs also perform HD down-conversion and aspect ratio adaptation to generate PAL-M broadcast-quality baseband analog video and audio, keeping TV Centro América’s analog transmission on-air until the government mandated switch-off scheduled for 2018. The ProView IRDs are controlled by Harmonic’s DMS™ video distribution management system.
“The biggest challenge we faced during the project was migrating the transponder to another frequency as quickly as possible,” said Sidnei Brito, owner of SDB Comercial. “Thanks to Harmonic’s DMS video distribution management solution and our extensive engineering expertise, we successfully completed the migration with less than five minutes of signal downtime.”
On the delivery side, TV Centro América is using Harmonic’s Electra™ 8200 universal HD MPEG-2 and AVC encoders to provide high-quality, low-bandwidth MPEG-4 AVC encoding of video content for its new multiscreen service. Additionally, Harmonic’s ProStream® 1000 stream processing platforms guarantee the protection of content by supporting scrambling of DVB simulcrypt applications, working in sync with conditional access systems from Irdeto and Nagravision.
TV Centro América is also using the Harmonic Ellipse® 3000 contribution encoder and ProView IRDs at its Cuiabá facility for contribution purposes. The facility delivers live productions via a terrestrial IP network to stations in the Mato Grosso Television Network, covering more than 200 cities in the region. The Ellipse and ProView platforms are also installed within TV Centro América’s DSNG trucks. Together, the contribution encoders and IRDs provide TV Centro América with a high-density, scalable and bandwidth-efficient contribution solution that maintains superior video quality during live broadcasts.
“Unlike our competitors, Harmonic offers a complete solution for contribution, satellite distribution and reception, guaranteeing amazing video quality and lowering the total cost of ownership for our customers,” said Alvaro Martin, Harmonic’s regional vice president of sales for Latin America. “This innovative solution was deployed just in time for the football championship in Brazil, enabling TV Centro América to transmit breaking news from the stadiums and the teams’ headquarters to viewers in full HD, free to air.”
Further information about Harmonic and the company’s products is available at www.harmonicinc.com.
About Harmonic
The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are also subject to other risks and uncertainties, such as those more fully described in Harmonic’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended Dec.31, 2014, its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and its Current Reports on Form 8-K. The forward-looking statements in this press release are based on information available to Harmonic as of the date hereof, and Harmonic disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements.