(24 March 2008 3:00 pm)

MUMBAI: Envivio, which provides IP video convergence encoding solutions from mobile to HD, today announced that its 4Caster C4 encoders are being used in extensive broadcast trials in Shanghai.

The company also announced that for the first time it will also combine AVS video encoding with China’s standard for digital terrestrial television broadcasting.

This is the first large-scale evaluation of AVS with the DTMB (GB 20600-2006) Digital Terrestrial Media Broadcasting standard to take place in China. Full commercial roll-out of digital terrestrial TV services based on a combination of the two standards is expected to begin later this year.

The three-month long trial broadcasts were organised and managed by Shanghai Oriental Pearl Company. AVS streams encoded using the Envivio 4Caster C4 were broadcast using the DTMB standard and then decoded by STBs powered by Shanghai Longjing AVS chipsets.

The Chinese government has made the roll-out of digital terrestrial broadcasting services a priority in its 11th 5-Year Plan for the development of broadcast and entertainment technology. The use of AVS encoding in place of MPEG-2 makes this even more attractive.

The commercial roll-out of this technology will target over one million subscribers in Shanghai alone, and offer an array of services including standard TV set content delivery, in-vehicle entertainment, and outdoor and indoor signage and advertising. The success of the Shanghai trial will pave the way for trials and deployments of similar systems in other regions of China.

The Envivio 4Caster C4 four-channel encoder can support AVS and several other compression standards from the same platform. The proven reliability and high AVS encoding quality of the C4 contributed significantly to the success of this first trial. The C4 is a high-availability hardware platform with an embedded software encoding core.

This compression architecture offers levels of service flexibility and upgradeable encoding performance that is not possible with traditional hardware-only encoding platforms. Enhanced encoding performance, as well as new services and features, can be added with straightforward software releases rather than requiring the purchase and installation of new hardware.

As the first international member of the AVS Workgroup, Envivio has been an active participant for nearly three years and introduced its first AVS encoder products in March 2007. The flexible architecture of Envivio’s encoding platforms and the fact that its encoding algorithm development is done in-house enabled Envivio to execute a very rapid development programme for AVS.

Envivio adds that it is committed to supporting the AVS standard. As with all other codecs supported in Envivio encoding products, Envivio has a continuous programme for improving the bandwidth efficiency of its algorithm implementation.