A new Scientific-Atlanta PowerVu digital content distribution system, designed and installed by Atlantic Telecommunications Services Corporation for the Washington Public Affairs Network (TVW), is delivering a variety of live and taped US government programming to over 130 cable communities across Washington.

According to a press release issued, Atlantic Telecommunications, a Scientific-Atlanta value-added distributor, the new TVW digital transmission system went into operation a couple of months ago.

An official release informs that the new PowerVu digital transmission system has replaced a less effective analog system that used both microwave and fiber interconnects that left significant holes in coverage and accessibility to the programming.

Atlantic Telecommunications claims that it had no problems with the PowerVu digital rollout. The pre-launch technical preparations which included provisioning of satellite uplink facilities, digital satellite space segmentation, and network technical management services, combined with the reliable performance that PowerVu digital delivers, enabled the company to quickly shift TVW from analogue to a Scientific-Atlanta Originator encoder-based digital satellite delivery system.

The release estimates that the PowerVu turnkey digital satellite content distribution upgrade solution saves TVW approximately $10,000 per month, improves signal quality and reliability. It also provides service to areas within the state that have no fibre interconnectivity or would have required multiple microwave hops to reach.

TVW’s new PowerVu system will provide cable viewers with access to a wide range of government-related programming including live coverage of Washington State Senate and House of Representatives deliberations; lectures from the state university system’s campuses; and other public affairs events, as well as taped government and public policy programming.

Scientific Atlanta has stated that Atlantic Telecommunications continues to choose its PowerVu solution for its customers because of the tight match between the products’ capabilities and performance and the application needs of the customers they typically serve.

The TVW system includes PowerVu Originator encoders with backup redundancy and uses the new PowerVu Programme Receiver (Model D9850). This 1RU, cost-saving unit offers NTSC/PAL video decoding, Dolby Digital and MPEG audio decoding, and DVB/DES de-scrambling. Currently over 400 Scientific-Atlanta digital video compression systems are transmitting over 2,000 channels of digital programming.

Atlantic Telecommunications provides satellite distribution consultation, network management services, system design and integration services.