now TV Deploys OTT Multiscreen Services With Harmonic's ProMedia™ Software Solutions
19 Jun 2012Harmonic Inc. today announced that now TV, a member of PCCW (SEHK: 0008) and Hong Kong's leading pay-TV operator, has chosen Harmonic's ProMedia™ software solutions to power its new OTT multiscreen streaming application, the now Player. Harmonic's ProMedia Live real-time multiscreen video processing and encoding system and ProMedia Package adaptive stream preparation system, managed by Harmonic's NMX Digital Service Manager™, enable now TV subscribers to watch high-quality live television and video-on-demand services on any viewing platform, including smartphones, tablets, PCs, and other IP-connected devices.
"now TV wanted to augment its service to include a high-quality and reliable over-the-top viewing experience. Harmonic's ProMedia family allows us to support live streaming efficiently, while providing a superior quality of service," said Belinda Chan, senior vice president of operations and technology at PCCW. "By accessing an over-the-top media portal in our broadcast operation center, now TV subscribers can connect to a variety of rich media content on any device anytime."
Leveraging Harmonic's award-winning H.264 video codec technology, ProMedia Live transcodes baseband MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AVC H.264 content to multiple high-quality adaptive bitrate streams optimized for now TV's OTT services. Encoding can be split across multiple machines, providing now TV with an efficient workflow that optimizes the processing required for delivering streaming video. By effectively handling metadata information — language, captions, ad signaling/insertion — on input and output, ProMedia Live further simplifies operations. ProMedia Live is integrated with Harmonic's ProMedia Package to perform sophisticated transcoding, encapsulation, and encryption processes, all from a unified platform. This powerful integrated functionality reduces now TV's carbon footprint dramatically, leading to decreased capital and operating expenditures.
Harmonic's NMX Digital Service Manager controls both the ProMedia Live and ProMedia Package systems, enabling now TV to seamlessly monitor and manage its multiscreen video and audio services. Through a comprehensive user interface, now TV can create and modify channel lineups in addition to setting encoding and rate-shaping parameters. NMX features a highly scalable and extensible architecture that grows in tandem with the environment it supports, a benefit that will allow now TV to easily introduce new value-added services like start over and catch-up TV as its business needs evolve.
"Harmonic has been now TV's trusted technology partner for many years, and this latest ProMedia installation reinforces Harmonic's visibility as a leading provider of video infrastructure solutions in China and the Asia-Pacific region. As Asian operators continue to roll out next-generation video services, Harmonic systems will continue to deliver the unmatched quality and performance that enables those services to succeed," said Andrew Thornton, vice president of Asia-Pacific sales at Harmonic. "With the addition of over-the-top multiscreen services, now TV offers its subscribers a higher quality, more innovative television experience."
now TV's broadcast operation center features existing Harmonic digital video processing solutions that seamlessly work alongside the new ProMedia and NMX systems. Harmonic's Electra® SD/HD MPEG-2 and AVC encoder and ProStream™ 1000 real-time stream processor further enhance now TV's multiscreen environment by providing a high level of density, scalability, and reliability critical to delivering high-quality value-added services.