Cable and satellite operators are going toe-to-toe in the battle to offer more HD programming to their subscribers. Lacking a true triple play of its own, satellite providers such as DirecTV have made HD content, particularly sports programming, a high priority.
DirecTV announced today that it will be using Harmonic’s HD MPEG-4 H.264 encoders for its national HD channel expansion effort. DirecTV has Harmonic’s DiviCom Electra 7000 HD encoder in its stable, as well as Harmonic’s ProStream 1000 stream processing platform with DiviTrackIP distributed statistical multiplexing and Harmonic’s NMX Digital Service Manager.
“The Electra 7000 enabled us to provide superior video quality for the latest expansion of our HD channel lineup that will include up to 100 national HD channels by year-end,” said DirecTV CTO Rômulo Pontual, in a prepared statement.
Harmonic said seven of the 10 largest satellite operators worldwide currently use its compression systems, and the majority of these customers have also selected the Electra 7000 to power their HD H.264 services.