(21 February 2009 7:15 pm)

MUMBAI: Aksh Optifibre has joined hands with US-based Envivio Inc, the technology provider of IP video convergence encoding solutions from mobile to HD.

Aksh will select the Envivio 4Caster C4 convergence encoder to upgrade and expand its video services. This will make Aksh the first three screens service provider (Mobile TV, Internet TV and IPTV) in India, the company said.

The Envivio three screens encoding platform will also enable Aksh to upgrade its existing IPTV service and add a new Internet TV offering.

The initial Mobile TV service from Aksh leverages India’s state-run MTNL (Mahanagar Telecom Nigam ltd) network to offer subscribers the entertainment channels from the Aksh IPTV service including Doordarshan, Neo Sports, CNN and NDTV. The company plans a “significant expansion” of the number of channels is planned for early 2009.

“Delivering television services across all three consumer screens could be a complex undertaking,” said Aksh Optifibre MD Kailash Choudhari. “Envivio’s unique 4Caster C4 enables us to standardize our encoding across a single flexible platform that can deliver Mobile TV, Internet TV and IPTV with the highest video and audio quality to virtually any device we want to support. The software architecture of this product will allow us to upgrade performance and features, while offering the tiered compression levels and the multi-profile support which we believe will dramatically enhance the quality of experience for consumers.”

The 4Caster C4 convergence encoding system is designed to enable fixed line and mobile network operators to deliver content simultaneously across the range of consumer devices. It is able to take multiple channels of content and encode them simultaneously to deliver multiple mobile TV profiles, multiple Internet TV profiles, or SD and HD IPTV profiles.

The 4Caster C4 supports digital, analog and MPEG-2 transport stream over IP inputs and a range of video and audio encoding options to enable efficient delivery of content to the three screens.

The 4Caster C4 supports one channel of high definition or multiple channels of standard definition encoding for IPTV with support for picture in picture. It also offers multi-profile encoding support for Internet TV up to VGA resolution, and for mobile TV streaming.

For IPTV applications, 4Caster C4 can be delivered in either premium compression or extreme compression encoding configurations using Envivio’s encoding core. For Internet TV applications, 4Caster C4 can deliver content for playback in Windows Media Player, QuickTime and Flash. For Mobile TV applications, 4Caster C4 can deliver 3GPP, 3GPP2 compliant streams for playback on a wide range of mobile devices.

Encoding performance can be upgraded with each software release, and new services and features can be added in the same way.