[Satellite TODAY 04-05-13] The compression market is heating up ahead of NAB with the main technology vendors making a flurry of announcements as they look to meet the needs of broadcasters and DTH players. This has become a huge issue as most broadcasters are moving to HD, and the topic of ultra-HD – while in its infancy – will place greater demand on compression vendors.

     “Expansion satellite capacity has been delayed but the pressure to carry more channels continues. We are in constant touch with compression vendors regarding their development roadmap and regularly testing new encoder hardware and software. We expect to do at least one compression upgrade every year,” he said.

    Riza admits the demise of MPEG2 has not happened, the way perhaps some in the industry predicted. “Three or four years ago people thought all the compression vendors were going to focus on MPEG4, and not put much effort into MPEG2. But, that has been far from the case. There are a number of major operators worldwide still on MPEG2 as they are not prepared to swap their STBs to MPEG4. There is therefore still a significant market for MPEG2 compression and the vendors are consequently making investments in improving performance. The vendors provide regular updates on what the percentage bandwidth improvements will be, and what changes they have planned,” he said.

    In Indonesia, a country with a population of over 240 million, and where multiple DTH players exist, this has also been an issue. Handhi Kentjoni, vice president, MNC Sky Vision, a DTH provider, admits the operator moved to MPEG4 too soon. “We reached about 800,000 subscribers before we switched over to MPEG4. Right now, with MPEG4, we have the capacity for 160-200 channels, while the channel right now is less than 120. For the foreseeable future, we are OK. We are not looking for more satellite capacity in the next year, unless we want to use for competitive reasons,” he said.

    In South Korea, the situation is somewhat different, given there are not huge amounts of competing DTH platforms. SkyLife, a Korean pay-TV player, is already making plans to go to Ultra-High Definition TV. The company is working with Ericsson on different test transmissions aimed at the introduction of next-generation TV experiences, including an Ultra-HD trial and High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) tests to determine how the new standard can be deployed in multiple applications.

    Ericsson itself is launching a new compression platform for the delivery of TV services over all networks. The AVP 4000, powered by Ericsson’s first-ever in-house developed programmable video processing chip, is a single platform addressing multiple applications, regardless of codec, resolution or network.

    Thomson Video Networks, another player in this space, is introducing a range of new products to enable DTH operators and broadcasters to be more efficient. The company has announced that its ViBE VS7000 multi-screen video encoding/transcoding system now provides support for the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) compression standard for live and offline applications. It is also launching higher-density versions of its ViBE EM4000 multi-channel encoder and ViBE CP6000 modular contribution platform. Both systems now feature a density of eight HD channels per rack unit and enhancements for increasing operational flexibility and decreasing the cost per channel. “Second generation AVC compression allowed a real deployment of HD. Today, operators are requesting more channels and want to convert SD MPEG-2 channels to HD-AVC,” Jean-Louis Diascorn, product manager for Encoders at Thomson Video Networks said. “Our ViBE EM4000 is the third generation encoder which now exists to achieve this target. MPEG-2 is very close to the theoretical limit. However further enhancements are needed for broadcasters to have more space for HD channels, while keeping initial set-top boxes.”