• Mixed Signals’ Sentry chosen by Cablecom
By Traci Patterson
At IBC 2008, Mixed Signals announced that its Sentry digital content monitoring solution has been selected by Cablecom, the largest Swiss cable operator, to ensure that Cablecom’s programming – both standard-definition (SD) and high-definition (HD) – is delivered with the best possible picture and sound quality.
Cablecom will initially deploy Sentry in its Zurich headend. Sentry will also monitor each program at the MPEG, IP and quality levels, enabling issues to be resolved before subscribers are affected. According to Mixed Signals, Sentry is currently the only solution that continually monitors each individual program at all three levels.
Cablecom provides its customers with cable TV, broadband Internet access, and mobile and fixed network telephony. The company has more than 1.5 million television customers, of which 321,000 are digital subscribers; 480,000 are high-speed Internet customers; and 309,000 are digital telephony customers.
• Russia’s NCN selects range of Harmonic solutions
By Traci Patterson
National Cable Networks (NCN) has selected Harmonic’s compression, video processing, EdgeQAM and on-demand solutions, which will allow NCN to provide its 700,000 customers throughout Moscow with a service package including digital television and advanced services, such as video-on-demand (VOD) and network-based digital video recording (DVR).
NCN – Russia’s largest cable operator with more than 4.5 million subscribers – is deploying a hybrid cable and fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) architecture for the delivery of its digital and on-demand offering. Downstream content will be delivered over NCN’s HFC network using the NSG 9000 Universal EdgeQAM for broadcast services, Harmonic said. NCN’s premium programming and interactive services, such as VOD, as well as upstream data, will be delivered over IP.
According to Harmonic, NCN’s digital broadcast television service will be powered by Harmonic’s DiviCom Ion encoders. Harmonic’s CLEARcut offline content preparation software, in conjunction with the Electra standard-definition (SD) and high-definition (HD) encoders, will create on-demand assets, and the ProStream 1000 stream processing platform with Mentor re-encoding technology will be used for bit-rate “clamping” of the network DVR content. Harmonic’s Armada Content Delivery Network (CDN) and StreamLiner video servers will be used for VOD asset distribution and delivery.
More Broadband Direct:
• FCC calls DTV trial a success
• Time Warner CFO: Digital distribution helps film studios
• Secure Signals, IPtimize team up to help ops fight cable piracy, theft
• TiVo, RIM bringing TiVo service to BlackBerry smartphones
• Verizon selects Navteq for traffic widget
