Archive of the IPTV Category

For this year’s Democratic and Republican national conventions, Reuters relied on IP-packet transport from Denver and St. Paul, MN, via Genesis Network’s fiber optic network.

While it’s tough to say whether or not this is the first time IP backhaul has been used at a political convention, its application at the events certainly among the first. In Amsterdam, Genesis Networks was exhibiting at the Cisco stand where it was trumpeting its involvement in this year’s political extravaganzas.

Company VP marketing and business development Brittany Neal discusses what the Genesis Networks delivered to Reuters at the conventions and the advantages of IP backhaul of contribution level video and audio in this podcast.

TANDBERG Television is demonstrating the latest generation MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AVC encoding for SD and HD television, IP statistical multiplexing and IP streaming as part of its iSIS 8000 IP head-end solution for broadcast applications. DVB-T, DVB-T2 and DVB-H video streams can be processed in the same head-end providing the efficiencies of IP transport for all current and future over-the-air broadcast services.

In Europe, broadcasters desiring HDTV deployments are focusing on a new generation of DTT technology provided within the latest DVB-T2 standard. While these solutions, should reach the market by late 2009 and early 2010, broadcasters need to be ready to deliver more video, in more formats, and in the most efficient way possible. more

AmberFin today announces the launch of the latest version of its iCR software, an open-standards platform technology that can digitize and transform new and archived content.

AmberFin iCR 4.0 includes SD/HD ingest and is optimized for open storage servers, with integrated review and quality control. Its repurposing module has been enhanced to enable it to reduce file sizes by as much as 25 percent.

The platform also provides increased interoperability with Apple FCP and Avid editing systems. more

IBC2008 offers a glimpse of a new way for viewers and IPTV operators to get a grip — literally — on television viewing at the Orca Interactive stand.

The IPTV middleware provider is showing its new Compass content discovery tool changes the equation when it comes to choosing what to watch. A replacement for EPG and older ways of finding out what’s on the tube — oops, I mean panel — Compass blends a variety of content recommendation engines to build a customized menu of program selections based an individual user’s preferences.

One of those engines taps into the runaway popularity of social networking to bring to the television a very ordinary occurrence, namely friends recommending you watch a specific program or episode. In the Stone Age, I remember friends actually talking about “Dallas” and who shot JR. Did I see this or that episode that held a clue? more

Harmonic announced that its Rhozet media transcoding technology has been selected by Flow Works, which handles MTV Germany, for integration with its Flow Center digital asset management and distribution system. At MTV Germany,

“This is certainly one of the most encompassing systems we’ve deployed so far,” said Oliver Meurer, Managing Director at Flow Works. ” more

I had dinner at the Altmann restaurant in Amsterdam with Sarah Lum, director of marketing communications and David Price, vice president of marketing, from Harmonic this evening. Because the menu was in Dutch, I have no idea what I ate, but it was good.

I was introduced to the Harmonic’s new ProStream 4000 multiscreen transcoder. The encoder is a multiscreen, real-time, IP-based transcoder supporting a broad range of applications and codecs and seamlessly integrates into existing IP headends. The 16 channel, 1RU package transcodes MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) content into a variety of formats suitable for mobile and Internet TV delivery, as well as for synchronizing content from a DVR for on-the-go viewing on portable media players.

The ProStreram 4000 solution is focused at easily enabling a converged “any-to-any” video experience by providing Internet TV, 3G/4G mobile TV and “sync-and-go” video delivery to devices such as mobile phones, personal computers, personal media players, IP-enabled set-top boxes and digital televisions.

See Harmonic at stand 1.C61.

Welcome to the Broadcast Engineering IBC blog for 2008. During the next six days, this blog will take you inside meeting rooms, behind exhibitions and into board rooms to learn the latest in broadcast and production technology and management. In one place, you’ll be able to follow Broadcast Engineering editors and writers as they experience all that IBC has to offer.

First of all, let us not ever forget this important anniversary date, September 11. It was seven years ago today that the United States was viciously attacked in New York; Washington, DC; and near Shanksville, PA. Almost 3000 people died in that one-day event. From stock broker to restaurant waiter to broadcast engineers working on the top floors of the Twin Towers, families lost mothers, fathers, grandfathers, grandmothers, children, friends and co-workers.

Take time today to remember the sacrifice of those who were unfairly, and too soon, taken from our lives.

Now, let’s look at what’s on tap for today, Thursday, September 11. more