Globalcomm: Tandberg touts product line breadth

CHICAGO--Tandberg Television is using the Globalcomm trade show floor to show off its broader range of head-end gear, following the integration of its SkyStream acquisition. The company now features both chassis- and component-based encoding and transcoding for both premium standard-definition video quality and high-definition, advanced video coding.

And at Globalcomm, it is demonstrating an industry first--an HD picture-in-picture, on the Tandberg premium HD platform, the EN5900. The system is able to output the MPEG-4 AVD HD main video and the picture-in-picture, done in SD resolution, from a single system.

Being able to take HD source material and do both HD and SD versions simplifies things for the network operators and enables SD-only viewers to watch HD channels.

The product line breadth is important in a market that is just taking off, said Matthew Goldman, vice president of technology compression systems at Tandberg.

“There is no single correct way to do IPTV, and every service provider has their own approach,” Goldman said. “Some want NEBS-compliance, and some don’t. We are NEBS certified. Some want density, and we have two chassis-based systems that do that. Others want individual components. Some want redundancy that is internal to the system. It all depends on where your sweet spot is.”

Larger companies, such as AT&T, Verizon and other Tier 1 companies, will require a combination of solutions, he added. Smaller service providers often want a complete head-end solution that can be installed on a turnkey basis.

The new picture-in-picture feature on the chassis-based products, the iPlex and the Mediaplex,