ESPN STAR Sports chooses TANDBERG Television for First MPEG-4 AVC Contribution and Distribution System

ESPN STAR Sports chooses TANDBERG Television for First MPEG-4 AVC Contribution and Distribution System

State-of-the-Art C&D System Will Enable the Delivery of High Quality Sports Content at Low Bit-Rates

TANDBERG Television (OSE:TAT), part of the Ericsson Group, today announced it has been chosen by ESPN STAR Sports (ESS) to provide the advanced video compression head-end for the world’s first MPEG-4 AVC contribution and distribution (C&D) system. The deal will enable Asia’s biggest sports broadcaster to more efficiently distribute its programming to cable head-ends across Asia and to manage its satellite transponder usage.

ESPN STAR Sports showcases an unparalleled variety of premier live sports from around the globe 24 hours a day to a cumulative reach of more than 310 million viewers in Asia via its encrypted pay services to 15 networks covering 24 countries. The service provider is harnessing the best-in-class bit-rate performance of TANDBERG Television’s next-generation MPEG-4 AVC EN8000 encoders to achieve bandwidth savings while still maintaining essential high picture quality.

The deployment of this first MPEG-4 AVC C&D system marks an important milestone in the evolution of the advanced compression standard and for TANDBERG Television’s market leadership in professional video compression. Having already gained a strong lead in DTH and IPTV, TANDBERG Television’s MPEG-4 AVC encoding has now reached the performance and reliability levels that makes it suitable for the demanding professional video transport and backhaul area, where maintaining picture quality is paramount.

Andy Rylance, ESPN Star Sports Senior Director, Engineering, said; “As Asia’s number one sports content provider, having the best possible picture quality is critical to our viewers and a primary driver in our business and technology decision making process. The bandwidth savings and transponder efficiencies of MPEG-4 AVC are economically attractive and, as a leader in the broadcast industry in Asia, we wanted to take advantage of this new technological development as an early adopter. ESPN STAR Sports is confident that TANDBERG Television’s MPEG-4 AVC encoders can deliver us with the picture quality we demand. We are pleased to be working with TANDBERG Television on this exciting roll-out.”

The contract will see the deployment of a new TANDBERG Television video head-end, including EN8030 standard definition encoders, at ESPN Star Sports’ 73,000 square-foot state-of-the-art production facilities and earthstation in Singapore. The EN8030 is TANDBERG Television’s next-generation SD advanced encoder and combines enhanced features with the industry’s leading picture quality versus performance through bandwidth improvements of up to 50% over currently deployed MPEG-4 AVC units. The EN8030 is setting new bandwidth benchmarks thanks to a number of innovative features. These include improved motion estimation processes, single slice video processing architecture, dedicated processing for low resolution encoding of Picture-in-Picture services, and a number of performance boosting features such as Multi-Pass analysis and enhanced video pre-processing which are the basis of 12 new patent applications.

“We are delighted to be working with ESPN Star Sports to achieve another industry first in advanced video compression. ESS is an early adopter of digital TV technology on which it has developed a world-class viewer experience. The use of MPEG-4 AVC will not only bring operational efficiencies to ESS’ C&D network, but it will create an opportunity for the introduction of more channels and services,” said Graham Cradock, EVP and general manager of TANDBERG Television Asia-Pacific.

“With more than four years of first-to-market advanced compression experience and over 5,500 MPEG-4 AVC HD and SD encoders commercially deployed, we know that our customers need a unique combination of industry leading performance, reliability and choice. We are continually driving to provide customers with the performance and product features they need on which to confidently build their digital video businesses.”

About ESPN STAR Sports

ESPN STAR Sports is a 50:50 joint venture between two of the world’s leading cable and satellite broadcasters. As Asia’s definitive and complete sports broadcaster and content provider, ESPN STAR Sports combines the strengths and resources of its ultimate parent companies – Walt Disney (ESPN, Inc.) and News Corporation Limited (STAR) – to deliver a diverse array of international and regional sports to viewers via its encrypted pay and free-to-air services.

ESPN STAR Sports showcases an unparalleled variety of premier live sports from around the globe 24 hours a day to a cumulative reach of more than 310 million viewers in Asia. ESPN STAR Sports has 15 networks covering 24 countries, each localised to deliver differentiated world-class premier sports programming to Asian viewers. This includes ESPN Asia, ESPN China, ESPN India, ESPN Taiwan, ESPN Singapore, ESPN Philippines, MBC-ESPN (Korea), ESPN Hong Kong, STAR Sports Hong Kong, STAR Sports Asia, STAR Sports India, STAR Sports Taiwan, STAR Sports Southeast Asia, STAR Sports Singapore & STAR Cricket India. On the ground, the ESPN STAR Sports Event Management Group manages and promotes premier sporting events around Asia. The multi-lingual, online platforms, espnstar.com, espnstar.com.cn and espnstar.com.tw and footballcrazy.tv interact with millions of users providing them with in-depth sports news, results and competitions.

mobileESPN enables sports fans to follow their favourite sports more closely than ever with content specially delivered via their mobile phones. mobileESPN is the first of a regional suite of services to be offered across seven markets in Asia Pacific – Airtel (India), Hutch (India), Idea (India), BSNL (India), BPL Mobile (India), CSL (Hong Kong), Globe Telecom (Philippines) Maxis (Malaysia), SingTel (Singapore), Taiwan Mobile (Taiwan), Telkomsel (Indonesia), StarHub (Singapore), MobileOne (Singapore), PCCW (Hong Kong), Sunday (Hong Kong) and Astro (Malaysia). Our other multi-media platforms include fully-managed wireless services ranging from SMS/MMS to WAP.

About TANDBERG Television

TANDBERG Television, part of the Ericsson Group, delivers the multimedia technology and expertise that is moving digital video forward. Whether it’s advanced compression systems, on-demand or interactive television, the company’s award-winning solutions are used by the world’s leading network operators, broadcasters and content owners to deliver new viewer experiences and advertising opportunities. With a broad suite of open, standards-based products, TANDBERG Television offers the highest quality digital TV solutions including IPTV, HDTV, mobile TV, video-on-demand, advertising on-demand, and interactive TV applications. For more information, please visit www.tandbergtv.com.
Contacts

Platform PR for TANDBERG Television
Corporate/EMEA/APAC
Gay Bell, +44 208 964 9149
gbell {at} platformpr(.)com
or
TANDBERG Television
Corporate/Americas
Dwight Witherspoon, + 1 678-812-6319
dwitherspoon {at} tandbergtv(.)com
or
APAC
Bonnie Tan, +852 2899 7003
btan {at} tandbergtv(.)com