SkyStream announced Tuesday Sichuan Cable TV Networking selected SkyStream's Mediaplex-20 and iPlex video headend platforms to provide next-generation digital cable TV services to subscribers in Yi Bin, Pan Zhi Hua and the provincial capital Cheng Du — three major cities in Sichuan Province, China's most heavily populated province.
Sichuan Cable will also use SkyStream's Source Media Router (SMR), along with Mediaplex and iPlex, to deliver SimulCrypt content.
Sichuan Cable plans to convert its entire television offering from analog to digital cable in the next 10 years, just as the Chinese government plans to complete the digitization of the rest of the country's TV signals by 2015. SkyStream's Mediaplex headend is part of the integrated network backbone infrastructure that will help speed the digital movement while reducing capital and operating expenses.
"Cable companies around the world are starting to switch from analog to digital video in order to offer advanced services that were once available only from satellite operators," said Andy Lovit, vice president of worldwide field operations at SkyStream.
"Sichuan Cable's decision to start digitizing its cable system years before the government mandate exemplifies the rising market demand for digital media services, which will only escalate further in the coming years."
Sichuan Cable selected SkyStream's Mediaplex as its next-generation cable headend for its high density and integrated design. SkyStream's all-in-one delivery platform can turn around and re-multiplex hundreds of services in a single chassis, and offers a range of video functions that reduce rack space and power requirements.
Sichuan Cable also found SkyStream's IP cable technology and solutions to be ideal for a broad range of advanced applications. The Chinese service provider will use SkyStream's SMR to reliably and cost-effectively encrypt its video and data services.
Mediaplex-20 Headend
SkyStream's Mediaplex-20 system is a carrier-class, complete video headend in a single chassis that enables a new level of converged services over any last mile (CATV, xDSL, FTTH and Wireless).
It's the industry's first fully-integrated video headend to deliver MPEG-4 AVC encoding and transcoding. With its highly dense capacity of 48 MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 encoders, 64 ASI or over 120 transrating streaming, SkyStream's Mediaplex headend can distribute hundreds of high-quality video channels for large-scale video delivery in multiple formats and rates to millions of subscribers at the same time.
The Mediaplex-20 system also provides video multiplexing and demultiplexing, routing, video rate-shaping, stream replication, and SDH and ATM to IP conversion. Its standards-based, forward error correction (FEC) and IP MUX capability provides protection from loss of video packets during transmission, which enables video delivery over platforms to multiple locations without sacrificing Quality of Service. The Mediaplex-20 video headend has over 100 field-proven deployments in 18 months.
For service providers planning smaller deployments or in space-constrained environments, SkyStream also offers the iPlex ultra-compact video headend in a 1 RU form factor that provides the same integrated video headend capabilities of the Mediaplex-20 headend. The iPlex is the highest density integrated headend available today, supporting up to 8 MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 AVC encoders.
