NAB 2004 saw the launch of the Tandberg Intelligent Compression Engine (ICE), the industry’s premier platform for advanced encoding. The Tandberg Intelligent Compression Engine (ICE) is a powerful and sophisticated video and audio compression platform that provides a flexible and upgradeable solution for high quality implementations of Windows Media 9 Series Advanced Profile and MPEG-4 part 10 (H.264/AVC) technologies. The ICE card is included in the new Tandberg EN5930 encoder for MPEG-4 part 10 AVC, which was recently lunched at NAB.
Tandberg Television has over a decade of experience developing and delivering MPEG based products and end-to-end systems and is using this expertise to ensure that the EN5930 is the ultimate professional encoder for MPEG-4 AVC. The ICE platform also provides for flexibility and upgradeability. Existing users of the Tandberg E5710 MPEG-2 encoder can move to either Windows Media 9 Series or MPEG-4 AVC by upgrading existing equipment with the ICE card. Moreover, should the requirement arise, users can also switch between MPEG-4 part 10 and Windows Media 9 Series with a simple software change. This unmatched level of flexibility means that operators can choose Tandberg Television’s compression solutions with the utmost confidence in the ability to evolve their systems without obsolescence.
“To be successful these new advanced compression systems must be able to deliver flexibility and choice to the operator. Everyone is talking about the considerable bandwidth savings that can be achieved with advanced compression and of course, this is a major benefit driving the development of these new platforms. However, the requirements of our customers extend beyond just encoding performance, they require broadcast ready solutions that are reliable, controllable, fully integrated and interoperable,” says Eric Cooney, CEO of Tandberg Television. “We were first to market with a professional hardware encoding solution for Windows Media 9 Series last year, and now we’re extending our video compression lead with the launch of our new MPEG-4 AVC solution.”
The Tandberg EN5930 has been designed for a broad range of MPEG-4 broadcast and Telco applications including: Broadband operators offering TV services over xDSL networks. The improvements in picture quality at very low bit-rates and highly accurate bit-rate control combine to enable much greater reach to xDSL subscribers; Low bit-rate broadcasting over digital cable, satellite and terrestrial networks, enable increased channel counts and/or reduced costs; Archiving, clip capture and VOD authoring systems; Many other applications using IP, ATSC or DVB based transmissions.
The Tandberg EN5930 is a 1RU (rack-unit) encoder designed for MPEG-4 part 10 (H.264/AVC). In addition to significantly reducing bit-rate demands compared with MPEG-2, it packs a massive range of advanced broadcast features, delivering optimum quality from 256kbit/s to 3Mbit/s. The EN5930 provides low latency, simple set up and operation, guaranteed output consistency and superior performance making it ideal for easy operation of broadcast services. It is based on an extension of the world-beating E5710 encoder platform that is operational in hundreds of mission-critical systems around the world. Key features include extensive video pre-processing for noise reduction, key frame insertion and professional quality de-interlacing. It supports QSIF to full D1 NTSC/PAL resolutions. It also provides MPEG-2 transport stream ASI output (with an IP option) and supports audio encoding of up to 2 stereo channels with MPEG Layer II, Dolby AC-3 and options for aac and aacPlus.
