Solutions for IPTV

Envivio was the first company in the world to deliver MPEG-4 encoders for an IPTV deployment. In mid 2005 Shanghai Media Group in China selected Envivio 4Caster encoders to deliver live content to 80,000 subscribers in and around Shanghai. Since that first deployment, more and more IPTV operators like SMG have moved away from traditional MPEG-2 encoding in favor of the efficiencies offered by MPEG-4. Envivio's MPEG-4 encoding requires less than half the bandwidth of MPEG-2, making delivery of even HD content viable over xDSL networks. Envivio's Convergence Series product line was introduced in 2007 to address both IPTV and Internet TV using an all-IP, software-based architecture that offers levels of flexibility and upgradeability not available from other compression vendors.

 

Envivio's solution for IPTV is based around the key products listed below. Additional components such as IP routers and satellite IRDs are also supplied if required as part of the overall system solution.

4Caster C4 is the multi-service compression engine at the heart of the Convergence Generation IP video headend and supports encoding for Internet TV and IPTV services, with support for more services to follow shortly.

4Stream demodulates, decrypts and demultiplexes DVB-S and DVB-S2 Direct-to-Home (DTH) satellite TV services, and delivers them as MPEG-2 Transport Streams over IP network for transcoding by the C4.

4Manager provides headend management and automated M:N redundancy for the C4, 4Stream and other headend components.

 

Envivio's Convergence Generation IP video headend offers network operators a high quality yet cost effective solution for providing multiple service types from the same compression platform.

 

Convergence: The Convergence Generation headend has been designed to allow telco operators to run a full range of consumer video services from the same platform rather than having to reinvest in a new headend for each service type. The system supports IPTV and Internet TV today and more services will be added shortly.

 

All-IP: Envivio's Convergence Generation IP video headend receives, decodes, re-encodes, and transmits programming all in IP. The all-digital processing of content eliminates the need for traditional intermediate analog or digital video interfaces between decoders and encoders, reducing both cost and system complexity. Baseband video and audio interfaces are also available to help support local content insertion and legacy equipment. This all-IP architecture allowed ISP RingNett in Norway to slot in MPEG-4 encoding to its existing video headend quickly and easily.

 

Extreme Encoding: Envivio's new extreme encoding core implementation takes MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) compression to a new level. Available as an option on the C4 encoder, this implementation offers the very highest quality at the very lowest bitrates.

 

Unique Compression Architecture: Envivio's encoders are high availability hardware platforms with an embedded software encoding core. This unique architecture offers levels of service flexibility and encoding performance upgradeability not possible with traditional hardware-only compression platforms. The ability to upgrade encoding performance without having to buy new encoders was one of the reasons TUŠ TELEKOM in Slovenia selected an Envivio solution.

 

Envivio's unique compression architecture offers numerous major benefits to network operators:

 

Encoding Quality Upgrades: Unlike most professional encoder suppliers in the market, Envivio actually develops its video compression algorithms in-house. Our implementations are not rigidly coded into a hardware processor but run as embedded software on a high power, flexible Intel processing core. Encoding performance can be upgraded with each software release with no need to buy and install new hardware.

 

Performance Flexibility: Envivio offers two levels of compression performance for the IPTV version of its C4 encoder – an Extreme encoding profile to provide the very highest levels of compression – and a Premium encoding profile to provide a lower cost per channel solution while still maintaining high quality results. A video headend can contain a mix of Extreme and Premium profile channels. Operators can interchange Premium profile channels with Extreme profile via a software update.

 

Codec Flexibility: The C4 already supports a wide range of different video and audio codecs to deliver a variety of IPTV and Internet TV profiles. Video codecs include: H.264 AVC (H.264) Main and Baseline profiles; AVS (the Chinese video compression standard); and Windows Media Video. Audio codecs include: MPEG Layer II; MPEG-4 AAC; MPEG-4 HE-AAC v2; and Windows Media Audio. Other formats such as Dolby audio are available as pass through signals. This range will expand as support for more applications are added to the C4 encoder.

 

Multi-Service Flexibility: The key encoding product at the heart of the Envivio Convergence Generation headend is the 4Caster C4. This product already supports both IPTV and Internet TV applications from the same platform and more applications will be added shortly. The flexibility of Envivio's solution means that the platform can evolve and grow with changing operational requirements.

 

Feature Flexibility: The powerful multi-purpose processors used within Envivio's encoding products are totally flexible and can easily be used to support new features. Features such as encryption and advanced rate control have already been added as software options to some of Envivio's other encoder product lines. In fact most new features can be added in software with no need for hardware upgrades.

 

Rapid Product Development: Software based architectures can be upgraded more frequently and more rapidly than hardware-only based systems. Development and upgrade times for the Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) powering most professional encoders on the market today are very slow. With ASIC based systems, bug fixes are neither quick nor easy to implement and major upgrades require a hardware change.

 

Envivio's Convergence Generation video headend offers not only the best IPTV encoding solution today, but also a clear roadmap of future service, performance, and feature enhancements available through software upgrades.