Heartland Communications has selected SkyStream's Mediaplex-20 digital headend to provide IPTV services to its subscribers throughout Western Kentucky and Southern Illinois, SkyStream said at TelcoTV.
Heartland now offers its subscribers video, voice and data services, including 120 video channels through its IPTV service, using a hybrid MPEG-2/MPEG-4 Mediaplex headend.
"With other headends, we'd have to invest in MPEG-2 today and completely replace the MPEG-2 portions of the headend making our initial investment worthless and associating a much higher cost with our video delivery,” says Todd Heinrich, COO of Heartland. “SkyStream's able to protect our investment for MPEG-4 migration, so we're able to make the move when we're ready without being pressured by concerns over loss of investment and high cost to migrate."
SkyStream provided Heartland with a hybrid MPEG-2/MPEG-4 headend system so Heartland could do real-time MPEG-4 encoding and MPEG-2 transrating now and migrate to complete MPEG-4 in the future.
