Canal Plus Overseas has begun a migration to Thomson Video Networks (TVN) technology for its digital head-end serving Indian Ocean territories, Canal Plus announced Sept. 8.

   Canal said the newly equipped platform will be located in Boulogne, France and rolled out by November 2011. The platform will transmit 90 SD and HD channels encoded in MPEG-4 format. 

Canal Plus Overseas will be replacing its existing infrastructure with a combination of TVN products, including ViBE EM2002 dual-channel SD encoders, ViBE EM3000 HD encoders and NetProcessor 9030 multiplexers. Canal Plus will then upgrade to Thomson’s new ViBE EM4000 multichannel HD encoder in 2012.

   “The clear lead in MPEG-4 picture quality delivered by the Thomson compression technology, combined with the exciting potential offered by the ViBE EM4000, made this an obvious choice for us. The new platform we are creating, based on the ViBE encoder range, will be a highly efficient long-term solution for expanding our HD services over the next few years,” Canal Plus Technical Director Catherine Carde said in a statement.