Harmonic Supplying HEVC Headend Solution for Liquid Telecom’s Linear DTH Service

A Liquid Telecom satellite dish at Teraco. Photo: Liquid Telecom

[Via Satellite 05-09-2016] Liquid Telecom is using Harmonic’s ProView 8100 Integrated Receiver Decoders (IRDs), Electra X2 advanced media processors, ProStream 9100 high-density stream processors and NMX Digital Service Manager to support the launch of its fully managed service headend for a new Direct-to-Home (DTH) provider. The company has purchased Harmonic video infrastructure to maximize bandwidth efficiency, improve video quality, and address future market demands for Over-the-Top (OTT) multiscreen applications.

Liquid Telecom will use Harmonic’s ProView 8100 IRDs for digital turnaround satellite reception. They will be integrated with Harmonic’s Electra X2 advanced media processors for High Efficiency Video Codec (HEVC) encoding of SD and HD video content. Powered by the Harmonic Pure Compression Engine, the media processors support a wide range of video formats and codecs for satellite delivery, simplifying operations and future upgrades for the service provider.

Liquid Telecom will use Harmonic’s Electra X2 processors and ProStream 9100 stream processors with DiviTrackIP statmux technology to increase the efficiency and flexibility of its statistical multiplexing operations. Harmonic’s NMX video network management solution will control all of the company’s headend components.

“This project will be the first major DTH HEVC headend for Harmonic. The use of the HEVC codec and, in particular, Electra X2 media processors will allow Liquid Telecom to make the best use of available bandwidth on its three transponders and deliver pristine video quality to customers in Africa,” said Ian Graham, vice president of sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at Harmonic.