Snell, the new company formed through the merger of Pro-Bel and Snell & Wilcox, has announced that leading Spanish pay television company Canal Satélite Digital has purchased an Alchemist Ph.C — HD motion-compensated standards converter as a key component in the recent launch of Spain's first HD channels: Canal+ Premium HD, Canal+ DCine HD, and Canal+ Deportes HD.

By providing transparent conversion of SD and HD content from the U.S., the Alchemist Ph.C – HD enables Canal+ HD to offer a rich selection of high quality programming to its viewers. Canal+ HD prides itself on the variety of its HD programming, part of which consists of sports events, documentaries, movies, musical performances, and other content imported from North America. Recent examples include the U.S. Open and Masters golf tournaments, as well as NBA and NFL games. Canal Satélite Digital uses the Alchemist Ph.C – HD to convert these programs to the European standard. The Alchemist Ph.C – HD system is also used to downconvert native HD video for broadcast on the SD version of Canal+, and to upconvert archived video and live-production SD video for the HD broadcast.