Snell & Wilcox recently announced that KNME-TV in Albuquerque, N.M. is the first PBS member station to use the company's Memphis HD encoding technology.
KNME-TV is re-encoding the PBS 18 Mbps HD feed to 15.5 Mbps to allow transmission of both PBS programming and an IP datacasting service within the station's 6 MHz channel.
"We evaluated a lot of MPEG-2 encoders and found nothing that came close to the quality of the Memphis," said Jim Gale, director of engineering at KNME. "We have found that the pre-processing capability of the Memphis is so good that the resulting image is actually better than the incoming feed, with less noise and improved colorimetry."
The Memphis bit-reduction technology allows KNME-TV to engage in datacasting services, including delivering DVD-quality movies to members of a subscription service.
KNME-TV was the first Albuquerque station to air high-definition programming. The station is located on the campus of the University of New Mexico and has a coverage area reaching into southern Colorado.
