A number of public and private Icelandic broadcasters have selected Open Broadcast Encoder (OBE), a professional DVB encoder, usable on commodity hardware and open source, in a variety of contribution and distribution roles.
SportTV is moving from one to four channels and decided to use OBE for all distribution to IPTV networks run by Iceland Telecom and Vodafone Iceland.
“It wasn’t actually a matter of cost, but quality,” commented the station’s manager, Sigmundur Larusson. “There aren’t many products out there providing this level of quality, with frequent updates and accessible developers. We are very excited with new 4:2:2 options, and hope that OBE will make our quality stand out from the competitors.”
Vodafone Iceland chose OBE for a special channel earlier this year during the Icelandic pre-selection and ESC finals, which incorporated Twitter. Viewers on Vodafone’s IPTV platform and FTA on DVB-T set the record for Twitter usage in Iceland, providing more than 20,700 comments during the three-hour final.
Public broadcaster RUV is currently receiving signals from rental service Kukl which is using OBE for contribution of the prime-time programme Áhöfnin á Húna II.
Haraldur Larusson, technical operations manager for Kukl, took the decision after seeing the output from OBE during this seasons football matches. He said they started out with advice from Netvarpið but now they’ve built several systems themselves. He added: “Iceland’s vast IP connectivity is also perfect for OBE; I can order a SONET/SDH port in any town with less than an hour’s notice and get a signal to Reykjavik.”
Kieran Kunhya, managing director of Open Broadcast Systems, commented, “We welcome the enthusiasm Icelandic Broadcasters have with deployed OBE and look forward to working with broadcasters and their suppliers”.
www.obe.tv
