Liquid Telecom Selects HEVC Headend Solution From Harmonic for Linear DTH Service in Africa

Liquid Telecom, an independent data, voice and IP service provider in eastern, central and southern Africa, will launch a fully managed service headend for a new direct-to-home (DTH) provider leveraging a complete headend solution from Harmonic.

Liquid Telecom is using Harmonic’s ProView 8100 integrated receiver decoders (IRDs), Electra X2 advanced media processors, ProStream 9100 high-density stream processors and NMX Digital Service Manager for the new headend. By providing Liquid Telecom with a highly flexible, dense and scalable HEVC video infrastructure solution for linear broadcast delivery, Harmonic will enable the service provider to maximize bandwidth efficiency, improve video quality, and address future market demands for OTT multiscreen applications.

“While our platform will launch imminently, the goal was to partner with a video infrastructure provider with demonstrated deployment experience, technology innovation and a forward-looking roadmap to support our wider ambitions to include multiscreen delivery,” said Scott Mumford, group managing executive, satellite and VSAT at Liquid Telecom. “Within the marketplace there is only one company with the relevant suite of solutions, international expertise and pedigree we were looking for. Harmonic’s headend solution supports the latest video compression technologies, including MPEG-4 AVC and HEVC, as well as statistical multiplexing, allowing us to deliver superior video quality at low bit rates, with the flexibility to evolve via software upgrades.”

Liquid Telecom will utilize Harmonic’s ProView 8100 IRDs for digital turnaround satellite reception. They will be integrated with Harmonic’s market-leading Electra X2 advanced media processors for high-quality, low-bandwidth HEVC encoding of SD and HD video content. Powered by the Harmonic PURE Compression Engine™, the media processors support a wide range of video formats and codecs for satellite delivery, simplifying operations and future upgrades for the service provider.

Tight integration between the Electra X2 processors and Harmonic’s ProStream 9100 stream processors with DiviTrackIP™ statmux technology will increase the efficiency and flexibility of Liquid Telecom’s statistical multiplexing operations. All of the headend components will be controlled by Harmonic’s NMX video network management solution.

“Harmonic is uniquely positioned to facilitate Liquid Telecom’s long-term business plans, providing a complete headend solution that enables agile video delivery, access to new markets and profitable growth,” said Ian Graham, vice president of sales, EMEA, at Harmonic. “This project will be the first major DTH HEVC headend for Harmonic. The use of the HEVC codec and, in particular, Electra X2 media processors will allow Liquid Telecom to make the best use of available bandwidth on its three transponders and deliver pristine video quality to customers in Africa.”