Tandberg Television is set to play a key role in the U.S. High-Definition (HD) television market, thanks to a landmark deal with satellite television service provider DirecTV. The deal with DirecTV will enable DirecTV to deliver multiple HD channels to the home using Tandberg’s MPEG-4 AVC technology. The deal is worth more than $9 million.

DirecTV will commission the first of 26 MPEG-4 AVC HD enabled transponders in the summer of 2005, marking the first North American launch of advanced HD encoding technology by a satellite direct-to-home (DTH) provider.

Eric Cooney, Tandberg Television CEO commented, “DirecTV has chosen to move forward with advanced encoding technology at precisely the time when Tandberg Television has proven its ability to deliver the complex, bandwidth-efficient, end-to-end compression systems DirecTV needs to successfully execute its HD plans.”