Thomson’s VIBE hits 6000+

Thomson Video Networks today announced a milestone achievement, with the total number of television channels using Thomson’s ViBE EM SD encoders surpassing 6000. Quickly established as a reference for high quality and efficiency, the ViBE EM1000 and ViBE EM2000 have consistently been the best-selling standard definition encoders since their launch in 2009.

Real-time encoders supporting both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 (H.264), Thomson Video Networks’ ViBE EM1000 and ViBE EM2000 are powered by the custom-designed Thomson Mustang compression engine, and deliver benchmark encoding efficiency for broadcasters worldwide transmitting signals over their satellite, terrestrial, cable, and IP networks.

In the first half of 2011, the ViBE EM1000 and ViBE EM2000 were widely used in Europe for the deployment of digital terrestrial television (DTT) networks in Sweden, France, Spain, and Russia. Combined with the Thomson Video Networks NetProcessor, the ViBE encoders offer compelling benefits for DTT broadcasters seeking optimization of their terrestrial bandwidth together with specific features for content regionalization.

In Africa and the Middle East, direct-to-home (DTH) satellite operators including Noorsat in Bahrein and Multichoice in South Africa are operating the ViBE EM SD encoders.

Latin America’s two major satellite operators rely on the ViBE EM1000 and ViBE EM2000 for delivering their SD TV programs, and more than 50 transponders are currently on air. The Thomson ViBE EM1000 and ViBE EM2000 encoders are also widely deployed in the IPTV and cable TV domains in this region.

In Asia, ViBE EM1000 and ViBE EM2000 encoders are deployed in all broadcast TV applications including contribution. Thomson’s encoders deliver TV channels to millions of viewers for a roster of customers including Independent TV in Bangladesh, Television Broadcasts Ltd. (TVB) in Hong Kong, Fujian Southeast Cable in China, and Reliance in India.

When configured for delivering MPEG-2 content, the ViBE EM1000 and ViBE EM2000 achieve a bit rate savings of at least 15 percent. Satellite and terrestrial broadcasters can use this gain to pack more channels into the same spectrum or to improve the picture quality of SD content. For MPEG-4 encoding, the ViBE range’s full implementation of all the encoding tools offered by the standard delivers encoding of SD content at outstanding quality, at rates of less than one Mbps.

“With the performance of the ViBE EM1000 and ViBE EM2000 encoders, broadcasters can free up the space to carry more HD channels. When they combine these encoders in statistical multiplexer pools with ViBE EM3000 HD encoders, they get the most efficient solution on the market,” said Christophe Delahousse, president of Thomson Video Networks.