Imagine Communications is debuting a solution for improving video quality of SDV signals and highlighting its Quality On Demand (QOD) Product Suite at The Cable Show this week.
The company’s new SDV Staging Processor ingests digital broadcast
MPEG-2 SDTV (or HDTV) signals and outputs them in CBR format, at a higher video quality for any given bit rate relative to today's SDV clamping products. With the optional addition of the QOD Gateway, end-to-end VBR/StatMux can be employed, enabling up to 15 high-quality signals per QAM channel.
"At The Cable Show '07, we will be demonstrating the benefits of enhancing operators' VoD, HD-VoD and SDV services with VBR/StatMux, dramatically improving bandwidth efficiency and video quality,” said Marc Tayer, Imagine Communications' senior vice president marketing & business development. “We will also debut our new SDV Staging Processor, our initial product in the SDV market segment. This is a high-density, carrier-grade solution for improving video quality of SDV signals. While the SDV Staging Processor can be used on a standalone basis to improve video quality, when used together with the QOD Gateway, it represents the industry's first end-to-end VBR/StatMux solution for SDV, enabling up to 50 percent more streams per QAM at digital broadcast quality."
The QOD GatewayT system supercharges VOD expansion with much greater streaming capacity (up to 50 percent more streams per QAM channel) and enhanced video quality. The VoD system comprises the VOD Processor and the QOD Gateway, allowing three HD-VoD VBR streams to share a 256 QAM channel with equivalent video quality relative to today's maximum of two CBR HD-VOD streams. Similarly, up to 15 SD-VoD VBR streams can occupy a 256 QAM channel versus today's maximum of 10, with no video quality degradation relative to the source. SDV streams and ad insertion can also be multiplexed through the same QOD Gateway system. The QOD Gateway is a carrier-grade, off-the-shelf hardware platform, with Imagine's software, based on the MicroTCA standard.
