SKY Italia deploys ATEME video backbone

Italy: The new IP video network deployed by SKY Italia between Rome and Milan will use ATEME contribution encoders and decoders for enhanced quality and bandwidth efficiency. The multi-channel service will span over four Points of Presence initially, and will be used for content exchange across sites, primary distribution, and disaster recovery.The network integrated by CVE for SKY Italia is based on 10Gbps and 2Gbps circuits supporting low delay uncompressed video feeds on the optical layer, together with JPEG2000 and MPEG-4 compressed feeds over IP. All these services maintain a consistent 10-bit accuracy for video coding, thus avoiding any colour gradient distortions from the transmission. “The efficiency of the ATEME MPEG-4 4:2:2 10-bit compression allows SKY Italia to increase the number of channels transmitted while keeping the same backbone. Extra capacity will always be available on short notice by simply moving services to a higher compression efficiency” says Massimo Bertolotti, Head of Platform Engineering and Innovation at SKY Italia.

Quality and reliability were paramount criteria in SKY Italia’s selection of ATEME, which came after extensive tests. “During this trial period, and throughout the deployment, the support of our local partner CVE was instrumental in convincing SKY Italia and meeting all their expectations. We are delighted to be working with such a professional partner and look forward to the next projects” says Michel Artières, CEO of ATEME.