SBS Selects Tandberg's IP-based iSIS 8000 Head-End Architecture

Tandberg (News - Alert) Television, part of the Ericsson Group, has announced that Australia-based Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) has selected its IP-based iSIS 8000 head-end architecture for its Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) network.

 

The public broadcaster SBS started its digital television service in 2001. Reportedly, it currently reaches an estimated 96 percent of the Australian population. The new centralized head-end is expected to generate DVB-T transport streams for 12 separate regions.

 

“We are committed to expanding digital broadcasting to our diverse audience and we are upgrading our DTT network to take advantage of the latest generation head-end technology,” said Paul Broderick, director of technology and distribution at SBS.

 

He also said that Tandberg Television was a natural choice given their innovative digital terrestrial solutions and their proven track record in Australian DTT.

 

Tandberg Television is supplying secure digital (SD) and high-definition television (HDTV) encoders, dense multiplexing and embedded SFN (Single Frequency Network) adaptation. All these are based around a core of flexible IP switching.

 

For the Australian DTT market, this is the first deployment of Tandberg Television’s iSIS 8000 IP head-end architecture. Also, this is the first deployment worldwide of dense SFN adaptation as part of the Tandberg MX8400 IP multiplexer.

 

Ward Hansford, regional vice president for ANZ and South Asia at Tandberg Television said, “We are proud to be delivering some notable firsts for SBS, including the first IP-based head-end in Australian DTT and the world’s first deployment of our IP multiplexer with dense SFN adaptation.”

 

SBS is using Tandberg E5710 MPEG-2 SD and E5780 MPEG-2 HD encoders and the MX8400 IP multiplexer to output MPEG-2 Transport Streams, with SFN adaptation. SFN processing can support up to 16 transport streams in IP with SFN adaptation in a 2RU enclosure.

 

According to Tandberg, this configuration saves over half of a typical rack and considerable power and cooling needs associated with external adaptation.

 

Tandberg Television delivers the multimedia technology and expertise that is moving digital video forward. Last month, the company said that it is providing a MPEG-4 AVC high-definition (HD) encoding system to Spanish-based broadcast solutions provider Overon for the delivery of National Geographic Channel HD to broadcasters and TV service providers across Europe.