Harmonic ProStream. Photo: Harmonic

[Via Satellite 03-04-2015] Harmonic announced that Forthnet, the company that owns Nova, the largest pay-TV satellite platform in Greece, has chosen a high-end compression headend with video analytics from Harmonic to support its Direct-to-Home (DTH) SD/HD service. Harmonic’s local channel partner and system integrator OmniWave performed the installation.

Nova is using Harmonic’s Electra encoders for high-quality, low-bandwidth MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 encoding of SD and HD video content for live and Video on Demand (VOD) DTH services. The encoders are integrated with Harmonic’s ProStream stream processors for multiplexing, scrambling, and statistical multiplexing of MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 services in multiple streams. Nova also deployed Harmonic’s Iris advanced video analytics software suite to allow simultaneous monitoring and analysis of up to 250 video services.

“Our customers are constantly demanding superior video quality. Ultimately, we decided that a combination of DVB-S2 and MPEG-4 SD and HD technologies would be the most cost-effective method for delivering that experience and for reducing our OPEX by eliminating the cost of one satellite transponder,” said Constantinos Moraitis, technical director of the pay-TV technical division at Nova.