TANDBERG Television is giving cable operators twice the programs per transponder for their HD distribution with a new HD program transcoder. The RX8250 product enables programmers to leverage the bandwidth efficiencies of MPEG-4 AVC HD and DVB-S2 satellite distribution. This allows MPEG-4 AVC HD compressed content to be cost-effectively converted into high-quality MPEG-2 HD streams at the cable headend.
The RX8250 is part of an end-to-end cable HD distribution solution that allows content providers to carry six to eight MPEG-4 AVC HDTV channels on a satellite transponder. It helps operators with networks that have a large installed base of MPEG-2 HDTV set-top boxes by enabling efficient transcoding of MPEG-4 AVC/DVB-S2 distributed content into high-quality MPEG-2 HD.
The cable HD distribution solution combines the company’s HD MPEG-4 AVC encoding and Prekor satellite modulation, which uses dynamic precorrection to improve the received signal quality. High performance transcode functions guarantee high-quality MPEG-2 HD program streams.
The new RX8250 HD program transcoder also performs HD to SD downconversion to generate analog video and audio outputs, providing compatibility with both digital and analog tiers. Also, by offering automatic picture aspect ratio conversion and signaling via active format description (AFD), the RX8250 ensures widescreen HD video is correctly displayed when downconverted to 4:3 video. Closed captions, TV Guide data and program rating (V-Chip) services are supported as well.
