RENNES, FRANCE—As part of its “Behind Every Screen” approach, Thomson Video Networks combines on-premises and cloud-based resources as part of its all-encompassing video infrastructure. The company will showcase a number of its products at the upcoming CABSAT 2016 show that help make up this infrastructure, covering areas like ingest/playout, branding, ad insertion, encoding/transcoding, and packaging technologies.

ViBE XT1000

Part of Thomson’s display will be its ViBE line of products. This includes its ViBE CP6000 contribution codec, ViBE EM4000 HD/SD encoder, and ViBE XT1000 Xtream transcoder. The ViBE CP6000 features eight HD channels per 1RU chassis and a modular implementation of MPEG-4 contribution codecs for compression performance in contribution applications. New for the ViBE EM4000 is a SD-to-HD conversion capability, helping it offer a density of eight HD MPEG-4 AVC channels in a 1RU chassis. Then Thomson’s XT1000 enables OTT, cable and telco customers launch turnaround services, with support for up to 54 HD channels or 180 SD channels and transcoding from format to format.

Thomson will also demonstrate its playout and OTT services with the FUZE-1 playout system and ViBE VS7000 multi-screen and HEVC 4K encoder. The FUZE-1 integrates traditional channel-in-a-box playout functions with encoding and transcoding for broadcast and OTT delivery. The ViBE VS7000 offers live broadcast-quality encoding, video preprocessing, and file transcoding.

Thomson Video Networks will be located in the Zabeel Hall at booth ZG2-40 during CABSAT 2016, which takes places from March 8-10 at the Dubai World Trade Center.

RENNES, FRANCE—Dish HD Asia has gotten a good vibe from Thomson Video Netwokrs, as the DTH satellite pay-TV service has chosen to go with Thomson’s ViBE VS7000 HEVC encoder to handle the delivery of Dish HD’s new 4K/UHD and all-HEVC-HD satellite service to more than 120 channels throughout Northeast Asia. Powered by Thomson’s MediaFlex operating system, the ViBE is combined with the NetProcessor 9030 multiplexer/scrambler, MediaFlex suite, and FUZE-1 4K playout system for video quality improvement and HEVC compression.

Ideal Systems HK provided systems integration and installation of the ViBE system for Dish HD, which included new HEVC features. Among these are an interlaced mode and statistical multiplexing for variable bit-rate encoding to enable increased compression performance for 1080i video content delivery.

With the new system, Dish HD can now deliver 4K/UHD and HEVC channels to its viewers, as well as offer double channel capacity and have introduced a 4K/UHD HEC set-top box.

RENNES, FRANCE—Thomson Video Networks has announced that Stephan Richard has been hired as the new vice president of strategy and business development. Based in San Francisco, Richard will be responsible for managing and developing Thomson’s OTT partnerships throughout North, Central and South America.

Stephan Richard

Richard takes over at Thomson after most recently serving as the director of product management for Sling Media. Other previous positions include product manager and sales engineer at Modulus Video, and a variety of engineering, sales and marketing positions with Kasenna, which is now known as Espial.

Thomson Video Networks is a provider of video compression technology for media companies, video service providers and broadcasters. It is located in Rennes, France.

RENNES, FRANCE—The Republic of Ivory Coast is in the process of making the transition to digital terrestrial television and has gone with French transmitter manufacturer Thomson Video Network to help drive the transition. The company’s ViBE EM4000 encoders and NetProcessor 9030/40 multiplexers/video processors with DVB-T2 gateway are serving as the foundation for the pilot DTT video headend for CNM-TNT, the national Ivory Coast committee in charge of the transition.

NetProcessor 9040

The headend pilot is a collaboration between Thomson Broadcast and French DTT technology providers Sagemcom and HTTV. In addition to the ViBE and NetProcessor from TVN, the headend comes with an Amethyst redundancy switch. The systems will allow the government to test and evaluate the DTT service before rolling it out across the country. For the tests, the headend was first installed in Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s largest city.

Under the terms of agreement with the ITU, Ivory Coast must make the switch from analog to digital and put a DVB-T2 on air for VHF frequencies by June 2020.

RENNES, FRANCE—With Ultra HD and High Dynamic Range among the expected trending topics at this year’s IBC show, Thomson Video Network will be on hand to demonstrate its new ViBE 4K real-time compression encoder with a demonstration of encoding a live UHD TV signal to distribute HDR content.

Thomson Video Network ViBE 4K

The ViBE 4K enables media enterprises to use HEVC to provide optimal video experience to consumers through live compression of UHD sources up to 60 fps and in 10-bit color. In Thomson’s demonstration, ViBE 4K will take a UHD HDR signal from a SMPTE 2084-compliant broadcast feed and encode it to provide a standard UHD HEVC Main10 compressed stream with HDR information. After that, the stream can be decoded using any HEVC Main10-compliant decoder.

ViBE 4K with HDR support will be available for purchase in early 2016, but you can see it in action first at IBC 2015, which runs from Sept. 11-15 in Amsterdam. Thomson Video Network will be located at booth 14.A10.

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.

RENNES, FRANCE—As India currently goes through a government-mandated transition to digital programming, Hinduja Group has relied on Thomson Video Network in rolling-out its headend-in-the-sky platform. The HITS system was built on Thomson technology and will be used for Hinduja’s NXT Digital station in Noida, India.

Thomson's Headend Solution

Thomson provided its ViBE SD and HD broadcast encoders and its multiplexing and network management system. Using Thomson’s compression technology with advanced statmux features offers high picture quality at a lower bandwidth consumption, according to Vynsley Fernandes, executive director at Castle Media, the consulting company for HITS’ implementation.

The HITS technology will deliver programming to local cable operators via C-band satellite. NXT DIGITAL is scheduled to roll out across India in 2015.

Thomson Video Networks is a provider of advanced video compression technology headquartered in Rennes, France.

RENNES, FRANCE – Thomson Video Networks have revealed a new SingleFeed technology for its NetProcessor 9030/40 multiplexing and transport system, and RD1100 receiver/descrambler. The SingleFeed allows satellite distribution of SFN multiplexes to transmitters and regionalization of multiplexes, as well as complete coverage from DTH satellite reception.

Activated through a reconfiguration of the NetProcessor or RD1100, the SingleFeed offers a solution for regionalization of DVB-T2 multiplexes. It also enables headend operators to preserve resources and bandwidth for distributing services to both DTH satellites and terrestrial transmitters. The systems architecture allows operators to also send a multiplex only once for both the DTH receiver and the DVB-T2 transmitters.

“With our new SingleFeed solution, headend operators can simultaneously feed DTH receivers and DVB-T2 transmitters with a single multiplex,” said Stéphane Cloirec, Thomson’s director of product management. “Also, SingleFeed is enabling us to respond to the many new DVB-T2 greenfield opportunities, primarily in Africa and Asia, that require this capability.”

Thomson’s SingleFeed technology will be available in November.

RENNES, FRANCE – Thomson Video Network has set up shop in a new location. The video compression company has relocated its main office to a new 7,000-square meter office building, which has also received the Effinergie+ certification for energy efficiency.

The new office is located in the heart of ViaSilva in the “EcoCité” near the Rennes Atalante high-tech industrial center in France. Thomson Video Network has more than 400 employees located at more 15 facilities worldwide.