Airtel Digital TV powers HD offerings with Harmonic solution

Airtel Digital TV has deployed a compression headend solution from Harmonic in an effort to substantially improve the HD viewing experience for its customers.

The high-density, scalable and HEVC-upgradeable video infrastructure solutions from Harmonic is expected to help Airtel Digital TV increase bandwidth efficiencies and significantly improve video quality while lowering operating expenses.

The deployment is also expected to enable Airtel Digital TV to expand its DTH HD portfolio to over 50 premium channels, making it one of the largest HD offerings in India today.

“Harmonic’s compression solution allows Airtel Digital TV to deliver superior video quality at low bit rates while adapting to next-generation video compression standards such as HEVC,” said Dan Taylor, general manager in India at Harmonic.

“Our video infrastructure solutions help customers like Airtel Digital TV reduce OPEX and drive new business growth by simplifying the launch of additional HD channels,” said Taylor.

At the heart of the headend solution is Harmonic’s Electra X2 advanced media processor, which promises high-quality, low-bandwidth MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 encoding of SD and HD video content for live DTH services.

The Electra X2 media processors support a wide range of video formats and codecs for satellite delivery, including HEVC, simplifying operations and future upgrades for Bharti Airtel.

At Airtel Digital TV, the Electra X2 media processors will be integrated with Harmonic’s ProStream 9100 stream processor and ProView 7100 integrated receiver-decoder (IRD), and controlled by Harmonic’s NMX video network management solution.