German TV-production and broadcast enterprise CBC (a company of the Media Group RTL Germany) has chosen ATEME to supply encoding and decoding equipment for relaying live HD coverage of sports events back to its playout centre in Cologne. The ATEME codecs will be deployed on location for backhauling the dedicated feed over terrestrial IP fibre links at full HD quality. This is a major win for ATEME, involving migration to MPEG-4 HD backhaul for one of the world’s highest profile sporting events, where the quality of the video is especially important for the audience. The Kyrion encoders will deliver top quality HD pictures with the additional challenge of a relatively low bit rate of 15 Mbps. Being able to demonstrate high quality at that bit rate was critical, and meant that ATEME was chosen in place and addition of CBC’s other codec suppliers. The high level of support provided by ATEME’s German partner Global Media Distribution Services (GMDS) also played a big part in winning the CBC business. www.ateme.com
