Tandberg TV, PCCW Partner in IPTV HDTV Roll-out

HONG KONG, Nov. 28, 2005/Satnews Daily/ — Hong Kong’s PCCW's now Broadband TV has chosen Tandberg Television’s (Oslo:TAT) advanced compression solutions for the roll-out of HD over DSL.

Tandberg said the deal expands on the two companies' existing relationship and will make now TV Asia's first advanced encoding HD operator, as it deploys the Tandberg HD encoding solution for MPEG-4 AVC.

The now Pay-TV service launched in 2003 and has been using Tandberg’s MPEG-2 encoding for its premium channels. The rapid growth of now TV's subscriber base was confirmed when the company announced last week it had exceeded half a million customers, making it one of the largest IPTV platform in the world.

Tandberg said the new HD service will help PCCW retain its lead in the highly competitive Hong Kong television market. With Tandberg’s EN5990 MPEG-4 AVC encoder, now TV will be able to deliver a compelling HD service with sport, entertainment and news content in half the bandwidth that would have been required for the same picture quality with MPEG-2.

“Our focus is on delivering the best quality premium TV service possible, and Tandberg Television's world-leading compression has enabled us to achieve that,” says Paul Berriman, head of strategic market development at PCCW. “We have grown a successful standard definition business with Tandberg Television's IP video head-end and are now excited to be the first operator in Asia to offer HDTV based on the MPEG-4 AVC platform.”

Tandberg said its MPEG-4 AVC HD systems have been used by DirecTV, BSkyB, JSAT and Premiere and have based their HD services and trials on the encoding engine.

It added Tandberg’s world-first IPTV deployment shows that broadband TV operators can now enjoy the bandwidth-reducing benefits of MPEG-4 AVC while retaining the high picture quality of MPEG-2.

“Our MPEG-4 AVC HD systems are first-to-market and have proven to be as effective over DSL as they are over satellite,” says Graham Cradock, VP and general manager of Tandberg Television Asia Pacific.

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