A roundup of vendor and operator news from around the globe. Today's edition includes Asia-Pacific (APAC) and Europe.
Germany
Divitel has designed a streaming headend featuring Keepixo encoders for service provider MEDIA BROADCAST GmbH in Germany. As part of a bigger switch to the new hybrid offering freenet TV connect, the solution is intended to enable MEDIA BROADCAST to offer MPEG-DASH streaming capabilities. Viewers can access the streams via the freenet TV connect service within the freenet TV channel list. Initially the platform features 18 IP channels, but is designed to support additional channels without system-wide resets.
freenet TV is the consumer brand owned by MEDIA BROADCAST. It is a content package, consisting of private broadcaster channels, offered via DVB-T2 HD.
Taiwan
Taiwan Broadband Communication (TBC), serving more than 700,000 cable TV subscribers, recently deployed a second Harmonic (NASDAQ:HLIT) headend to support its CATV service. Using a combination of Harmonic's video encoders, multiplexers and playout system, TBC delivers 120 HD and 64 SD channels.
At the heart of the headend is Harmonic's video encoding platform, which is designed to increase SD/HD MPEG-4 AVC encoding efficiency and features motion estimation, multi-pass encoding and preprocessing capabilities. The encoders are integrated with Harmonic's multiplexing systems and Spectrum XE playout system for local ad insertion and branding.
Europe
NHK Cosmomedia Europe (NCME), an affiliated company with Japanese national broadcaster NHK, has selected the Paywizard Agile back office platform to provide subscription, CRM and billing for JSTV-i, NCME's over-the-top (OTT) video service and currently the only Japanese language TV service in Europe.
The Paywizard platform is designed to deliver hybrid functionality across OTT and direct-to-home (DTH) satellite services. Paywizard worked with Ericsson and Conax to deliver subscriber management as part of a secure playout solution. NCME, which had previously deployed Paywizard's legacy e-wallet solution MyPaywizard, completed migration to Paywizard Agile on Sept. 1.