MTV, Altitude Sports Pick Cisco Gear for Program Distribution

By Adam Goldberg

Cisco Systems (Room S214LMR) announced that MTV Networks and Altitude Sports & Entertainment will use Cisco MPEG-4 AVC encoders and equipment in their programming-distribution networks.

“Our customers are looking for comprehensive, unified solutions that deliver efficiencies today and pave the way for even more advanced capabilities in the future, such as IP content distribution,” says Brian Morris, Cisco VP, global business development, media, satellite and broadcast business unit .

MTV Networks will use Cisco equipment and services to create an expanded, more efficient distribution platform using Cisco medianet products and technologies, including MPEG-4 AVC encoding and transcoding, Cisco TelePresence, and Unified Communications systems.

The Cisco MPEG-4 AVC HD encoding/transcoding platform will deliver 16 HD channels, and use of the Cisco TelePresence and IP telephony systems will enable improved collaboration across the MTV Networks enterprise.

Altitude Sports & Entertainment — the official television network of the Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche, Colorado Mammoth, and Colorado Rapids sports teams — will use the Cisco MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding (AVC) and transcoding high-definition (HD) platform to enhance its capability for delivering regional sports programming.

Altitude will use the Cisco solution to distribute a single MPEG-4 AVC HD video stream for reception by Cisco Advanced Receiver Transcoders, which convert the incoming video to MPEG-2 HD, MPEG-2 standard definition, or analog.