South Korea’s KT SkyLife Taps Ericsson HEVC Encoders for Latest UHD Service

South Korean satellite pay TV provider KT SkyLife has chosen Ericsson to expand its UHD service, leveraging Ericsson’s high-performance HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) encoders to bring consumers transformed picture quality. The deal marks KT SkyLife’s fifth UHD channel launch to date, and underlines its leadership in providing the greatest number of UHDTV channels in Korea.

41% of consumers think that 4K or UHD quality is an important TV and media feature (Ericsson ConsumerLab 2015), leading to continued traction for UHDTV services in global markets. With next generation compression and HEVC, it is now possible for consumers to access these high quality services at home, bringing great potential for TV providers to improve their offerings and delight consumers with enhanced visuals. However, at the same time these providers must ensure that underlying compression technology has the stability and the flexibility to support these developments and future upgrades. With the highest worldwide market share of UHD encoders and transcoders, Ericsson is applying its proven success to help KT SkyLife meet these challenges.

Han Lee, CTO of KT SkyLife, says: “KT SkyLife is committed to providing the nation’s first multi-channel high-definition TV and 3D broadcasting services, and continuing its leadership with optimized commercial UHDTV services. As with our legacy standard and HD services, our UHDTV services will leverage best of breed technologies to bring our customers next generation immersive TV experiences. Ericsson has supported KT SkyLife with its unrivalled compression solutions for many years, and we have full confidence that this partnership will move our business forward and keep us ahead of the competition.”

Ericsson encoders support video compression and pre-processing improvements in MPEG-2, AVC and HEVC, with advanced compression capabilities for video quality optimization. The solution will ensure better video quality for KT SkyLife’s customers, with expected picture quality improvements of up to 15-20 percent, while utilizing less of KT Skylife’s bandwidth.

Giles Wilson, TV and Media at Ericsson, says: “Consumers are placing more and more value on high quality TV experiences, and delivering seamless UHDTV is therefore a key challenge and opportunity for all service providers. HEVC is fundamental to ensuring these new video formats can be deployed on a large scale cost-effectively, and we’re very pleased to help KT SkyLife maximize the potential of this standard. With our deep heritage in compression spanning over two decades we can ensure ultimate stability in our solutions, so that KT SkyLife can meet the demands of its customers and succeed in today’s challenging TV environment.”

This deal is the latest Ericsson compression solution to be implemented by KT SkyLife, who also use the AVP 4000 System Encoders and MX8400 Multiplexers.

At Broadcast Asia 2016, held May 31 – June 3, 2016, (stand number Lotus 4A/B) in Singapore, Ericsson will be showcasing the latest from its broad product portfolio for content owners, broadcasters and TV service providers.