Sky Italia has selected the Ericsson AVP 4000 platform to increase its HD channel offering and the cost-efficiency of its output. Sky Italia is to introduce an additional HD channel to subscribers without increasing transponder capacity.
Sky Italia is the first European satellite direct to home (DTH) customer to use the Ericsson AVP 4000 compression platform, which is powered by the company’s programmable video processing chip. This will enable Sky Italia to launch additional HD channels of the same quality and at no extra cost.
“Our subscribers demand high quality as part of their overall experience. The compression performance of the Ericsson AVP 4000 allows us to extend our service in a very cost-effective way with a rapid return on investment,” said Massimo Bertolotti, head of Platform Engineering and Innovation, Sky Italia. “What’s more, this entire upgrade took less than two months from order to on-air which enabled us to be very fast to market with this new content offering.”
The system encoder is built on Ericsson’s own technology and offers the broadest capability on a single platform across all applications, from SD to HD, 1080p50/60 and Ultra-HD TV and all codecs MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC and JPEG 2000, 4:2:0 and 4:2:2, 8-bit and 10-bit.
“The Ericsson AVP 4000 is not only the most powerful compression platform of its kind, it is also a truly multi-platform solution which does not compromise on picture quality or development flexibility,” commented Dr. Giles Wilson, head of TV Compression, Ericsson. “With this latest compression solution deployment, we are providing an extremely agile platform which will allow Sky Italia to use the same transponder to deliver an additional HD channel, while also reducing its annual spending.”
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