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digiGO! — NAB: DTH Sat Ops Acknowledged With New TANDBERG SD Encoder

TANDBERG Television logo TANDBERG Television, part of the Ericsson group (NASDAQ:ERIC), has started a new chapter in video compression — the Company will launch its latest innovation, the EN8100 MPEG-2 SD encoder, at NAB at Booth SU5108. The new system delivers a host of performance and operational benefits for DTH satellite, cable and terrestrial operators, as well as for content aggregators and distributors.

The TANDBERG EN8100 is the industry’s nexgen MPEG-2 encoder, based on in-house developed technologies and encoding algorithms. It has been designed from the ground-up to deliver revolutionary encoding performance in a high density, low power (6 channels in 1 RU) chassis. The EN8100 cuts MPEG-2 SD bandwidth requirements by at least 15 percent, even in legacy set-top box (STB) operations, and delivers a step change in performance that makes a meaningful difference to business cases.

  With close to 1 billion MPEG-2 standard definition (SD) STBs and integrated digital TVs expected to be deployed world-wide by the end of 2009 {source: Screen Digest‘s TV Technology Intelligence service, March 2009}, the TANDBERG EN8100 enables operators to achieve higher picture quality in the same bitrate, which is ideal for making SD MPEG-2 look acceptable on large flat panel TVs, and to profit from additional revenue from their existing infrastructure. Importantly, the minimum bandwidth savings of 15 percent are achieved while maintaining full compatibility with all previous generation STBs to maximize limited and expensive network and bandwidth space. This means all operators can cost-effectively launch new services and save one in every five frequencies/transponders used for MPEG-2 broadcast. This allows operators to:
  • Reduce transponder space and OPEX for SD services and launch HD services with no additional transponder space
  • Create space on cable networks to launch or expand new services such as HD, Internet or VOD by reducing bitrates currently used for MPEG-2
  • Deploy more SD channels per terrestrial multiplex with the same or superior picture quality than possible with any other MPEG-2 encoder available
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The TANDBERG EN8100 is the industry’s highest density MPEG-2 platform with up to 6 channels per 1RU, dual PSU options, inter-chassis card level system redundancy and hot-swap encoder cards. As well as requiring much less space and air conditioning, it consumes 50% less power and generates less heat than previous models, with power consumption as low as 47W/channel. The TANDBERG EN8100 is fully interoperable with existing deployed STBs, saving operators the need to accelerate STB swap-out and cutting billions of dollars in potential global device upgrade costs.