TVN Entertainment Implements Harmonic's CLEARcut Software Solution For HD VOD Asset Creation
Sunnyvale, CA - Harmonic Inc. recently announced that TVN Entertainment Corporation, the world's largest television on demand company, has deployed Harmonic's CLEARcut offline content preparation software for creation of TVN's high definition (HD) on-demand assets. Video is digitally compressed with Harmonic's market-leading DiviCom MV 500 MPEG-2 HD encoders and then formatted using the CLEARcut software for storage on video servers. CLEARcut is a part of Harmonic's MediaPrism application suite for on-demand asset creation that enables service providers to prepare content from any source—tape, DVD, live broadcast or the Internet.
The new solution allows TVN to support broadband, cable and telco service providers' desire to deliver more HD VOD content to consumers. In addition to creating superior video quality for the on-demand assets created from tape or DVD sources—a critical requirement for HD content—CLEARcut also offers high levels of scalability and flexibility. As service providers increasingly move to HD MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) compression, TVN can support simultaneous H.264 and MPEG-2 asset creation or transcoding using the CLEARcut software by simply adding a DiviCom Electra 7000 HD H.264 encoder to the system.
"We currently process more than 3,000 hours of content per month for on-demand distribution on cable, telco and broadband networks," said Dave Bartolone, Vice President of Technology for TVN Entertainment. "That number continues to grow, and an increasing proportion of the video content is high definition. Harmonic's CLEARcut content preparation software and the DiviCom encoders provide a superior solution for creation of our HD assets. The capabilities of the CLEARcut software to support other compression formats were also an important consideration as we looked for a solution that would meet our needs today and in the future."
"TVN is a preferred aggregator for on-demand content for the country's largest pay-TV service providers," said Guy Li-Ran, Product Marketing Manager for Harmonic Inc. "The selection of Harmonic's CLEARcut software and HD encoders by TVN highlights the strength of our suite of on-demand solutions for creating high quality assets from offline sources and the scalability inherent in the platform. With this solution, TVN can easily grow its VOD capabilities to support greater quantities and a larger variety of content, as demand continues to grow."
Harmonic's comprehensive on-demand solution portfolio encompasses content preparation, content ingest, intelligent asset distribution and edge processing, as well as broadband access for narrowcast applications in the HFC network. The full MediaPrism content preparation software suite includes CLEARcut, LIVEcut scheduler, Rhozet Carbon Coder universal transcoding and Ingest Gateway, enabling video from any source to be delivered to a wide variety of on-demand distribution models.
SOURCE: Harmonic Inc.