Thomson Video Networks Upgrades ViBE HD/SD Encoder

RENNES, FRANCE—Thomson Video Networks has announced the latest upgrade to its ViBE EM4000 premium HD/SD encoder, which now supports the company’s Flexstream 2.0 statistical multiplexing technology. With its new Flexstream 2.0 capabilities, the EM4000 includes non-video components in a statistical multiplexing tool.

Earlier this year, Thomson announced the EM4000 would have new broadcast-grade SD-to-HD conversion capability to allow broadcasters to combine HD MPEG-4 compression with the ability to upscale SD video to HD. Now, the EM4000 enables operators to re-allocate bandwidth for service components like audio, teletext, subtitling and closed captioning. In addition, the platform offers a density of eight HD MPEG-4 AVC channels in a 1RU chassis.

The ViBE EM4000 is also designed for IPTV developments to maintain video quality when non-video components are present, including DVB subtitling and audio description. The system also features SCTE104 handling that allows identifications to go through, signal conditioning at the splice point, and queuing of SCTE104 messages for back-to-back ads.

Thomson Video Networks will release the new ViBE EM4000 in October. Current EM4000 customers will be able access the new features through a software upgrade.