Grupo Televisa taps Tandberg for HD via MPEG-4 AVC

MPEG-4 AVC technologies continue to gain traction among multichannel service providers and Mexican satellite TV provider Grupo Televisa is the latest to sign on. The company will use Tandberg Television MPEG-4 AVC encoding and distribution systems as it migrates from MPEG-2. The move will allow the satellite provider to deliver HD and SD in the same bandwidth that they previously used to deliver only 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.

“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. “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 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.

Director, an all-in-one digital distribution control solution offering highly secure conditional access and control of the receiver network, will manage and control TANDBERG Television’s receivers. 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.

Grupo Televisa will also use Tandberg’s Reflex and PREKOR systems, enabling the addition of up to 30% more channels without increasing bandwidth or sacrificing image quality, Reflex is a statistical multiplexing system with the capability for more channels and better image quality with no increase in bandwidth. PREKOR is a dynamic pre-correction system that improves performance from a satellite transponder by employing transponder linearization techniques.

“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 Nu ez, 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.”