ASIA-PACIFIC BROADCASTING

Telefonica, the Spanish national telecom provider, is adding the latest Grass Valley (GV) ViBE EM2000 MPEG SD encoders to its IPTV headend. The EM2000 is based on the customer-designed GV Mustang compression engine, which uses excellent processing power to deliver MPEG-4 compression of SDTV signals in smaller bandwidths with superior picture quality.

The ViBE EM2000 MPEG SD encoder is said to reduce significantly the bandwidth requirement for comparable video quality over existing solutions. This is particularly valuable for IPTV services by making individual streams more robust on longer “last-mile” circuits to individual subscribers, thus increasing the reach of the service to a greater number of households.

The lower bandwidth requirement also reduces the impact on the network infrastructure, allowing for additional services to be added and releasing capacity for other data services.

GV provided the complete headend for Telefonica’s IPTV service in a turnkey contract in 2006. With this order, Telefonica has now returned to GV to update the headend with ViBE EM2000 SD encoders.

“Audiences are used to good quality TV, whether it is SD or HD, regardless of how it is delivered,” said Graham Cradock, vice-president of Headend Compression products for Grass Valley. “It is obvious that viewers will turn away from any delivery platform that does not provide the best viewing experience. That is why we developed our own unique approach to digital compression, to ensure the best possible quality in the right bandwidth, whatever the application.”

Meanwhile, Grass Valley has completed testing of its end-to-end, fully integrated Thomson ATSC Mobile DTV transmission system and it is now ready for deployment by broadcasters developing commercial mobile-TV services for their markets.

Thomson’s ATSC Mobile DTV Terrestrial Broadcast Technology from GV is based on the ATSC Mobile DTV standard A/153 — approved 15 October 2009 — and is backward-compatible with legacy ATSC transmission systems, enabling stations to use their existing DTV channel and the mandated ATSC 8-VSB modulation scheme. The technology offers several significant advantages over other systems, including the use of M/H Block Coding to provide maximum capability for signal reception.

Said to be the only supplier in the broad-cast industry to provide equipment from image capture through RF transmission, GV said it leveraged on years of experience and a broad product portfolio to develop a complete ATSC Mobile DTV system that is fully integrated and pre-configured to ensure real-world success. “This is an exciting time for broadcasters looking to build mobile video services,” said Richard Fiore, senior director for Transmissions and Mobility at Grass Valley. “Grass Valley has been very careful to develop a robust and reliable system that can be cost-effectively implemented in a very short amount of time.”

The basic equipment needed to begin broadcasting mobile video services via ATSC Mobile DTV includes programme encoders, a multiplexer, an electronic services guide (ESG) server, and a compatible DTV transmission exciter. These devices are now available in field-tested production models from Grass Valley.

For the most part, any existing Thomson-branded DTV transmitter already in use is capable of broadcasting the ATSC Mobile DTV signal (ATSC A/153) with minor upgrades. The key component that will require attention when implementing ATSC Mobile DTV service is the exciter. Initially, DTV transmitters were shipped with MODAP (6RU) and then later with ADAPT-IV (2RU) 8-VSB exciter platforms.  

The ADAPT-IV exciter platform features an embedded FPGA/Power PC core that allows a simple software upgrade to handle the additional requirements of the ATSC Mobile DTV system. Older MODAP exciters can be upgraded to the newer mobile DTV hardware platform.

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