>> Norwegian Operator GET Delivers High-Quality Broadcast and Multiscreen Services With Harmonic Solutions

Wednesday, March 6, 2013 - Harmonic, the worldwide leader in video delivery infrastructure, today announced that Norwegian operator GET has deployed a comprehensive Harmonic headend solution to power its IPTV, cable, and OTT multiscreen services. Through a high-density and scalable architecture designed to optimise bandwidth efficiencies, Harmonic’s video infrastructure solutions enable GET to cost-effectively deliver high-quality HD video services to a wide range of IP-connected devices.

“Continued strong subscriber demand for new cable and value-added video services made it imperative that we adopt a video infrastructure solution enabling continued scaling with great video quality,” said Christophe Brod, VP Broadcast, GET. “Harmonic’s integrated headend solution enables us to deliver exceptional HD video quality and user experience for both linear broadcast and OTT multiscreen, while significantly decreasing our operational and capital expenses as we roll out cutting-edge video services.”

At the heart of GET’s integrated Harmonic headend is the fully redundant ProStream® 1000 with ACE® real-time transcoding platform. Utilising this versatile processing solution, GET can perform MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) video and audio transcoding of multiple HD broadcast channels, as well as advanced statistical multiplexing, in order to maximise bandwidth efficiencies across its IP network. ProStream dramatically reduces GET’s carbon footprint and operating expenses, leveraging a high-density, scalable architecture.

For live OTT services, Harmonic’s ProMedia™ Live real-time multiscreen video processing and encoding system leverages adaptive bit rate technology to transcode MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 AVC content into multiple streams of H.264 with varying video resolutions and bit rates optimized for multiscreen delivery. Encoding is split across multiple machines to enable rapid media processing. ProStream and ProMedia Live are managed by Harmonic’s NMX™ Digital Service Manager, simplifying the creation, modification, and management of service lineups.

Harmonic ProMedia Carbon transcoders handle a variety of critical operations for GET’s VOD services, including SD/HD conversion, PAL/NTSC conversion, logo insertion, color space conversion, color correction, and closed-captions extraction, from a file-based architecture that can scale to meet the operator’s evolving business needs. The ProMedia Carbon transcoding farms are controlled via a Harmonic WFS™ file-based workflow system, which provides automated processing of high-volume transcoding tasks, failover support, job distribution management, job prioritization, load balancing, FTP transfer, status monitoring, and job notification, to further increase operational efficiencies.

“Given the increased consumer demand over the last several years for a high-quality video experience on any device, multiscreen video services are becoming an important tool for cable operators to retain existing customers as well as attract new subscribers,” said Thomas Henriksen, regional sales director, North Europe, Harmonic. “By maximizing GET’s scalability, flexibility, and operational efficiencies through a unified platform, Harmonic’s video infrastructure solutions will help streamline multiscreen and OTT delivery while enabling the operator to achieve a superior video quality.”

>> Harmonic Launches Cloud-Based Professional Video Transcoding Service

Available on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace, ProMedia™ Carbon MP Makes Cost-Effective, Broadcast-Quality Video Transcoding Accessible to a Broad Range of Professionals

Tuesday, March 5, 2013 - Harmonic (NASDAQ: HLIT), the worldwide leader in video delivery infrastructure, today launched a cloud-based transcoding service for professional applications available on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace. ProMedia™ Carbon MP, powered by the acclaimed Harmonic Rhozet® technology used in the ProMedia Carbon transcoding engine, enables content creators, service providers, and media professionals to quickly and cost-effectively convert broadcast-quality video content to virtually any standard media format, making it an ideal transcoding solution for a wide range of applications.

ProMedia Carbon MP allows users to transcode file-based video content in the cloud on an hourly basis. Users can also access the application’s powerful transcoding engine via a familiar XML API to deploy highly scalable, cloud-based transcoding workflows. In either scenario, the platform’s rich user interface and flexible API allows users to perform a host of critical video operations, such as SD/HD and PAL/NTSC conversions, logo insertion, color correction, and multiformat closed-captioning processing.

“Harmonic recognises that service providers and media professionals are looking to the cloud for all types of applications. Today’s announcement marks a new level of capability in this exciting medium,” said Yoav Derazon, director of product management for cloud services and transcoding, Harmonic. “ProMedia Carbon MP significantly changes the landscape of high-quality video-format conversion by making it both cost-effective and easily accessible. Whether our customers utilise ProMedia Carbon MP to meet ad-hoc transcoding needs or as a platform for hosting a cloud-based transcoding farm, they’ll be able to greatly improve their transcoding workflow and minimize costs through a pay-as-you-go business model.”

In addition to saving users the expense of purchasing site transcoding licenses, ProMedia Carbon MP supports the industry’s broadest array of acquisition, nonlinear editing, broadcast, web, and mobile formats including MXF, XDCAM® HD, QuickTime®, CableLabs®, and MP4. The intuitive user interface ensures complete control over every aspect of the transcoding process and simplifies the ability to convert files into any number of target formats, each with a unique set of operations and filters applied.

Customers that will benefit from the ProMedia Carbon MP service include media professionals with low-volume transcoding needs, content owners and service providers who require assistance managing occasional spikes in load on their transcoding workflows, and service providers looking to deploy flexible, cloud-based transcoding farms.

ProMedia Carbon MP is the newest addition to the Harmonic’s award-winning ProMedia family of software and appliance solutions engineered to optimize video production workflows for live and high-volume video-on-demand multiscreen applications.

ProMedia Carbon MP on AWS Marketplace is available at https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B00BEP74L8.  

>> Harmonic Named Top Video Headend Provider in Latest MRG IPTV Market Leader Report

Tuesday January 8, 2013 — Harmonic, the worldwide leader in video delivery infrastructure, today announced that Multimedia Research Group Inc. (MRG) has ranked Harmonic as the top global headend provider within its annual IPTV market report. MRG’s comprehensive study, “IPTV Market Leader Report by Product and Region — Fall 2012,” identifies the best IPTV systems and software companies in six key product categories and geographical regions. The ranking is based on the number of deployed IPTV subscribers using a given vendor’s products and the calculated number of input channels for the IPTV video headend segment. Harmonic video infrastructure solutions currently power 29.9 percent of IPTV service providers’ headends worldwide, capturing an impressive 45.6 percent of the market share in Latin America, 53 percent in Western Europe, and 28 percent in North America.

“After gathering data from more than 900 service providers and over 60 IPTV vendors around the world, MRG has determined that Harmonic is the top global headend solutions provider,” said Jose Alvear, senior research analyst at MRG. “This was an especially important achievement because Harmonic was the only vendor in this year’s report to move up and capture the top spot in our global IPTV leader rankings.”

Over the past two years, Harmonic’s advanced IPTV headend solutions have been deployed by more than 240 new telco customers and currently power over 12,000 channels in North America, helping the company surpass Google/Motorola as the top video headend solutions provider worldwide. Harmonic video infrastructure systems deliver exceptional video quality while optimizing operational efficiencies through increased density and scalability. Recent customer wins include Northeast Texas telecommunications provider ETEX Telephone Cooperative and Ben Lomand Telephone Cooperative in Tennessee.

“While Harmonic has been the dominant IPTV headend solutions provider in Latin America and Western Europe for years, recent technology advancements like ProStream 1000 with ACE have enabled us to make dramatic inroads in North America,” said Thierry Fautier, senior director of convergence solutions, Harmonic. “Harmonic’s innovative video infrastructure solutions resolve the most pressing needs of IPTV service providers by delivering high-quality video content — including value-added services like multiscreen — at reduced operational expenses. The MRG data is a powerful confirmation of the strong year that Harmonic had in 2012 and will continue to expand upon in the future.”

For more information about Harmonic and the company’s products Contact Harmonic in Australia.

>> Visit Harmonic in Australia at Stand 26 at Connected Entertainment 2012, 21st and 22nd November.

www.harmonic.net.au

>> Harmonic wins prestigious technology awards at IBC2012

ProMedia™ Suite Captures Best Mobile TV Technology Award; ProMedia Xpress Earns STAR Award for Technological Innovation in the Broadcast Industry

Wednesday September 19, 2012 — Harmonic, the worldwide leader in video delivery infrastructure, today announced that it won multiple awards at the recently concluded IBC2012, Europe’s largest event for the broadcast, cable, satellite, and telco industries. Harmonic’s ProMedia™ Suite received the “Best Mobile TV Technology or Service” award from CSI magazine, while the company’s ProMedia Xpress — a new high-performance, file-based transcoder — was named a TV Technology Europe Superior Technology Award Recipient (STAR). These awards highlight the company’s leadership in innovation, video quality and solution flexibility.

“We are honored to accept these industry awards recognizing Harmonic for its substantial contribution in optimising multiscreen video production and delivery,” said Peter Alexander, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Harmonic. “Harmonic’s comprehensive solutions help our customers cost-effectively deploy traditional television and next-generation multiscreen services with exceptional video quality. These awards further showcase our commitment to creating innovative and scalable technology solutions that move our entire industry forward. ProMedia has been successfully deployed by many tier 1 broadcast and content operators around the world to deliver a more personalized multiscreen television experience.”

The CSI Awards are one of the most comprehensive and competitive technology awards around the world, designed to reward technical and product marketing excellence in the cable, satellite, terrestrial broadcasting, mobile, and IPTV markets. Harmonic’s ProMedia Suite of software solutions was given the CSI Award based on its ability to streamline multiscreen and production video workflows, performing a broad range of processing and streaming functions to enable high-quality video creation and delivery to TVs, PCs, tablets, smartphones, and other IP-connected devices.

As the newest addition to Harmonic’s ProMedia family of multiscreen software and appliance solutions, ProMedia Xpress was presented with a TV Technology Europe STAR award at IBC by a panel of judges, including TV Technology editors, columnists, and industry experts, in honor of outstanding technological innovation in the broadcast industry. ProMedia Xpress facilitates cost-effective, faster-than-real-time transcoding of content for multiscreen VOD delivery, enabling operators to efficiently launch new services without compromising the quality of their offering.

Harmonic has also been named a finalist in the upcoming Communications Technology (CT) Platinum Awards contest, which will be presented during an exclusive awards breakfast at the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo, Oct. 17, at the Rosen Plaza Hotel in Orlando, FL. Shortlisted for the awards are Harmonic’s ProStream® 1000 with ACE® real-time stream processor/transcoder and ProMedia Suite, which are being judged in the digital headend equipment and multiscreen video solution categories based on excellence in technology innovation. ProStream 1000 with ACE is the industry’s first truly converged solution for advanced processing and transcoding of SD and HD MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) video and audio for broadcast and over-the-top (OTT) mobile/web applications.