Sky NZ Chooses Tandberg for $4M+ Pay-TV Satellite Network Upgrade

In a deal worth over $4M, Tandberg Television will support Sky’s system upgrade with an 80 channel compression system built on its low bit-rate MPEG-2 encoding engine, the Tandberg E577O. The contract includes a state-of the art video head end system, local integration and a five year support agreement, according to Tandberg.

Sky operates a sophisticated pay-TV service in New Zealand and provides a full range of high quality local and international programming alongside enhanced services such as pay-per-view sports and movies, interactive entertainment, gaming and interactive betting. The broadcaster launched its nationwide analog direct broadcasting satellite  (DBS) service in April 1997, which was upgraded to a Tandberg digital encoding platform in December 1998. Six years later SKY is once again looking to state-of the-art technology to enable it to increase its operational efficiency and to introduce new revenue generating services.

Tandberg Television said by deploying the company’s latest MPEG-2 compression engine Sky can take advantage of the significant performance developments that Tandberg Television has built into its latest MPEG-2 systems, with expected bandwidth savings of between 10-15%. This will enable the broadcaster to free up bandwidth to make space for new interactive and personal video recorder (PVR) services, as well as to achieve a rapid return on investment.

"Over the past six years we have worked closely with Tandberg Television to roll-out digital TV and interactive services and to grow a highly successful pay-TV business in New Zealand,”said Charles Ingley, director of technology at Sky. 

Tandberg Television said it has a long history of pioneering development of video compression technologies and is constantly pushing MPEG-2 technology to its limits to support broadcasters and operators in their aim to achieve maximum bandwidth management over their networks.

The E5770 is able to deliver high performance compression, while minimizing the total bit-rate through a unique multi-pass pre-processing technique that constantly optimizes bit-rate allocation for critical scenes, ensuring that the final encoded video has the best possible picture quality available, Tandberg Television said.

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