Envivio
Inc., the leading technology provider of IP video convergence encoding
solutions from mobile to HD, announced that its 4Caster C4 encoders are being
used in extensive broadcast trials in Shanghai that, for the first time,
combine AVS video encoding with China's standard for digital terrestrial
television broadcasting. This is the
first large scale evaluation of AVS with the DTMB (GB 20600-2006) Digital
Terrestrial Media Broadcasting standard to take place in China. Full commercial roll out of digital
terrestrial TV services based on a combination of the two standards is expected
to begin later this year.
The three month long trial broadcasts were organized and managed
by Shanghai Oriental Pearl Company Limited.
AVS streams encoded using the Envivio 4Caster C4 were broadcast using
the DTMB standard and then decoded by set top boxes powered by Shanghai
Longjing AVS chipsets. The Chinese
government has long believed that digital terrestrial broadcasting is the most
effective way to offer TV services to people living on the outskirts of cities
such as Shanghai, as well as in remote rural areas. The Chinese government has made
the roll out of these services a priority in its 11th 5 Year Plan
for the development of broadcast and entertainment technology. The use of highly efficient AVS encoding in
place of MPEG-2 makes this even more attractive. The commercial roll out of this technology will
target over one million subscribers in Shanghai alone and offer an array of services
including standard TV set content delivery, in-vehicle entertainment, and
outdoor and indoor signage and advertising.
The success of the Shanghai trial will pave the way for trials and
deployments of similar systems in the other regions of China.
Envivio is currently the world's only encoder supplier supporting
both the AVC (H.264) and AVS encoding standards. As the first international member of the AVS
Workgroup, Envivio has been an active participant for nearly three years and introduced
its first AVS encoder products in March 2007.
The flexible architecture of Envivio's encoding platforms and the fact
that its encoding algorithm development is done in-house enabled Envivio to execute
a very rapid development program for AVS.
Envivio is committed to support of the AVS standard. As with all other
codecs supported in Envivio encoding products, Envivio has a continuous program
for improving the bandwidth efficiency of its algorithm implementation.
The
Envivio 4Caster C4 four-channel encoder, which was used for the testing in
Shanghai, can support AVS and several other compression standards from the same
platform. The proven reliability and
high AVS encoding quality of the C4 contributed significantly to the success of
this first trial. The innovative C4 is a
high-availability hardware platform with an embedded software encoding
core. This unique compression
architecture offers levels of service flexibility and upgradeable encoding
performance that is not possible with traditional hardware-only encoding
platforms. Enhanced encoding performance,
as well as new services and features, can be added with straightforward software
releases rather than requiring the purchase and installation of new hardware.
