NTT Expands IPTV Rollout with TANDBERG Television MPEG-4 AVC to Support ADSL Customers in Japan

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

NTT deployment is world’s first MPEG-4 AVC IPv6 service

Southampton, UK - TANDBERG Television announced today that On Demand TV — a joint venture of NTT West (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone West Corp.) and Itochu — will expand its deployment of TANDBERG Television’s Mediaplex-20™-based video headends to support MPEG-4 AVC technology for its nationwide IPTV rollout in Japan.

On Demand TV is planning to deploy TANDBERG Television MPEG-4 AVC transcoding in its Mediaplex-based headends in Tokyo (East) and Osaka (West). Each headend will process transcoded MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 AVC content and deliver it to NTT’s Broadband (FTTH and ADSL) customers. On Demand TV also is adding two new Mediaplex headends to its existing installation of Mediaplexes to transcode the MPEG-2 content to MPEG-4 AVC and to provide additional headend redundancy.

On Demand TV will use the MPEG-4 AVC transcoding technology to reduce the bit rate of video delivery over millions of its DSL lines and to offer a new, extensive library of video-on-demand (VOD) movies to NTT’s subscribers in both standard definition and MPEG-4 AVC High Definition VOD.

“After one year, our MPEG-2 IPTV service has been completely dependable and is operating well with the Mediaplex. We’re getting ready to expand our IPTV offering beyond our fiber networks and make it available to the rest of our subscribers over our ADSL networks, and TANDBERG Television’s MPEG-4 advanced compression and transcoding technology enables us to deliver high-quality content regardless of bandwidth constraints or content format,” said Yasuyuki Taniguchi, chief manager of engineering for On Demand TV. “The Mediaplex video headend’s efficient migration path to MPEG-4 will make it easy for us to upgrade our headends with a minimal amount of resources expended.”

NTT West and NTT East provide telephone and broadband services to more than 60 million subscribers across Japan, which has one of the world’s highest broadband penetration rates. On Demand TV currently delivers 27 broadcast channels over the NTT West and NTT East IPv6-based fiber networks using MPEG-2 compression. TANDBERG Television’s MPEG-4 AVC transcoders let On Demand TV expand its services and deliver MPEG-4 AVC video and content over NTT’s widespread DSL networks, through bandwidth efficiency gains of approximately 50% from the MPEG-4 AVC technology. Additionally, by adding transcoders to its SkyStream Mediaplex, On Demand TV can convert its MPEG-2 content into high-quality MPEG-4 AVC while preserving picture quality, teletext, subtitling and audio through one all-digital step – allowing it to leverage its current base of MPEG-2 content for distribution over MPEG-4 AVC. With the addition of MPEG-4 AVC transcoding, NTT will become the world’s first carrier to deploy an MPEG-4 AVC IPv6-based television service.

“Now that carriers of all sizes – from the smallest rural telcos to the world’s largest providers, like NTT – are successfully delivering IPTV, service providers no longer see video as an option, but as an essential part of their service offerings,” said Jim Olson, executive vice president, TANDBERG Television. “The planned expansion of NTT’s IPTV service to MPEG-4 AVC is indicative of the growing success and pervasiveness of IPTV worldwide. Our continued work with NTT as their video service evolves is truly a testament to our equipment’s ability to grow with providers as their services expand and advance.”

About Transcoding
TANDBERG Television’s transcoder allows service providers to offer MPEG-4 content over their networks at a much more efficient bit rate and cost than was previously possible. By easily converting widely available MPEG-2 content into MPEG-4 AVC in one all-digital step, the transcoder eliminates the failure rates and unnecessary quality degradation associated with the traditional conversion method. Service providers maximize the bandwidth of their existing network infrastructure and offer higher quality video streams to their subscribers.

About Mediaplex-20
TANDBERG Television’s Mediaplex-20 is a carrier-class, complete video headend system in a single chassis that enables a new level of converged services over any last mile (ADSL, FTTP, and CATV). Mediaplex-20 is also the industry’s first fully-integrated video headend to deliver MPEG-4 AVC encoding, transcoding and picture-in-picture encoding. With its highly-dense capacity of 48 MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 AVC encoders or transcoders, TANDBERG Television’s Mediaplex can distribute hundreds of high-quality video channels in multiple formats and rates to millions of subscribers simultaneously. Mediaplex-20 also provides video multiplexing and de-multiplexing, routing, video rate-shaping, stream replication and ATM-to-IP conversion.

About TANDBERG Television
Whether it’s advanced compression systems, on-demand or interactive television, TANDBERG Television delivers the technology and expertise that is moving digital video forward. The company’s award-winning solutions are used by the world’s leading network operators, broadcasters and content owners to deliver new viewer experiences and advertising opportunities. With a broad suite of open, standards-based products, TANDBERG Television offers the highest quality digital TV solutions including IPTV, HDTV, video-on-demand, advertising on-demand, and interactive TV applications to customers in the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East and Africa. For more information, please visit www.tandbergtv.com.

For further information, please contact:
Gay Bell
Tel: +44 20 8964 9149
E-mail: gay@platformpr.com

Dwight Witherspoon
Tel: 678-812-6319
E-mail: dwitherspoon@tandbergtv.com

Contact Information

Gay Bell

TANDBERG Television

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