Eutelsat KabelKiosk using Harmonic headend solution

Harmonic has revealed that Eutelsat KabelKiosh, a provider of ready-to-use TV products and services for network operators in Europe, has deployed an integrated headend solution from Harmonic to power its extended DVB and IP platform and multiscreen service distributed to multiple cable and telco operators throughout Germany.

This solution allows Eutelsat KabelKiosk to efficiently prepare 50 HD and 100 SD channels for IPTV and adaptive bitrate streaming to smartphones, PCs, set-top boxes and connected TV devices.

Martina Rutenbeck, managing director of Eutelsat visAvision GmbH, which operates KabelKisok, comments: “Eutelsat KabelKiosk is constantly increasing the size of its digital service offering to anticipate the needs of our customers. For this project, it was important that we are able to support a wide range of applications, including live, on-demand services and start-over TV, on both set-top boxes and multiscreen devices. Harmonic’s end-to-end headend solution is extremely dense, making it easy to support a wide range of applications, services, and devices, while also ensuring superior video quality.”

Leveraging Harmonic’s versatile ProView 7100 integrated receiver-decoder (IRD), Eutelsat KabelKiosk can receive up to four satellite carriers per rack unit. Harmonic’s ProStream 9100 with ACE high-density stream processor and transcoder increases Eutelsat KabelKiosk’s operational efficiencies by supporting 20 HD or 60 SD broadcast transcoding services, as well as 10 HD or 20 SD OTT services encoded in a variety of adaptive bitrate profiles, from a single rack unit. Additionally, by leveraging market-leading ACE transcoding technology, the ProStream 9100 delivers the flexibility to support a variety of applications such as digital turnaround, any-to-any transcoding, time-shift TV, VOD, picture-in-picture (PIP), and live adaptive streaming to PCs, tablets, smartphones, and OTT set-top boxes.

Content storage is optimised using a combination of Harmonic’s ProMedia Origin HTTP streaming video server and Harmonic MediaGrid shared storage system. Together, ProMedia Origin and MediaGrid accelerate file-based workflows while reducing I/O latencies. Relying on industry-standard protocols such as Apple HLS and Microsoft Smooth Streaming, ProMedia Origin publishes live and time-shifted services to multiple viewing devices. By supporting independent scaling of storage capacity, bandwidth, and streaming capability, the combined solution enables seamless expansion of Eutelsat KabelKiosk’s IP and multiscreen service.

Harmonic’s NMX Digital Service Manager controls the ProView 7100, ProStream 9100 with ACE, and ProMedia Origin systems. Through a comprehensive user interface, NMX allows Eutelsat KabelKiosk to easily create and modify network topology and channel line-ups, in addition to setting transcoding parameters. NMX features a highly scalable and extensible architecture that grows in tandem with the environment it supports, making it easier for Eutelsat KabelKiosk to introduce new value-added services in the future.