Snell & Wilcox today announced that Albuquerque, NM-based KNME-TV is the first PBS station to use its MEMPHIS HD encoder to enable 24-hour HD broadcasting alongside a new datacasting service. The MEMPHIS system allows KNME-TV to re-encode the 18MB/s HD feed from PBS to a 15.5MB/s signal without compromising image quality, and this bit-rate reduction in turn frees up the bandwidth necessary for delivering both HD broadcasts and IP datacasting services over a 19.39MB/s ATSC bit stream.

KNME-TV, the first Albuquerque station to take HD signals to air, has installed the MEMPHIS system in its TV studios at the University of New Mexico. The station transmits HD signals to a 120-mile radius around Albuquerque, as well as to southern Colorado and Taos, NM. With the ability to re-encode HD signals at a high quality level and lower bit rate, KNME-TV has been able to launch commercial datacasting services such as delivery of DVD-quality movies to members of a subscription service. The Snell & Wilcox MEMPHIS also is valuable for ingest, DVD authoring, satellite uplink, and long-haul transmission on fiber to other studios.