More detail on Lucent encoders.............
techweb.cmp.com
Harris, Lucent join forces on digital-TV
encoders
By George Leopold and Nicolas Mokhoff
WASHINGTON -- Harris Corp. and Lucent Technologies Inc. said on
Wednesday that they have joined forces to provide broadcasters with
digital-TV encoders.
Harris said its Broadcast Division (Quincy, Ill.) will market MPEG-2 encoder
boards that Lucent had unveiled last year. Lucent (Murray Hill, N.J) is
credited with developing the first MPEG-2 and HDTV encoders.
Affordable encoders are widely seen as a key element in the quick
deployment of digital TV. "The lack of encoding equipment has been a major
concern for broadcasters," said Bruce Allan, vice president and general
manager of Harris' Broadcast unit. "This is another important step to help
broadcasters move seamlessly" to digital TV.
The partners said they have received orders for new encoders from A.H.
Belo Corp., a leading U.S. broadcaster, and WSB-TV, a Cox Broadcasting
station in Atlanta. Harris has provided digital-TV transmitter equipment for
six of the seven experimental digital-TV stations in the United States.
Observers said the deal with Harris is likely to give Lucent greater visibility
among broadcasters as they prepare to deploy digital services.
Unlike other encoders on the market, the FlexiCoder architecture developed
by Lucent and Harris will feature module and system-level redundancy, and
will also support hot-swappable modules that will allow in-service repair. The
architecture will essentially allow any of the 1,648 U.S. broadcasters targeted
by Lucent and Harris to ensure that the digital-video signal isn't disrupted
from the transmitter to the consumer at the receiving end by chip or board
failure.
Lucent is using 1-for-N redundancy for the multichannel standard definition
TV (SDTV) encoders, 1-for-1 redundancy for HDTV encoding groups, and
1-for-1 redundancy for both the controller board and power supply, all under
software control.
The mid-plane design of the FlexiCoder is a standard 19-inch rack that has
21 slots to accommodate the encoder, controller, controller/mux and monitor
decoder boards on the front side of the plane, and video boards specific to a
customer's transmitting requirements (MPEG, SDTV, HDTV video and
others) on the other side of the plane. FlexiCoder uses a three-piece MPEG
encoder chip set from IBM Microelectronics, which expects to integrate the
set into a single chip in time for the fall introduction of the next-generation
FlexiCoder. At that time, the FlexiCoder architecture will be able to
accommodate a multiformat HDTV signal at both the 1,080 interlaced and
720 progressive-scan rates.
Andreas C. Papanicolaou, president of Lucent Digital Video, a Lucent
Technologies group, said that a full HDTV version of the FlexiCoder will be
exhibited at the National Asscoaition of Broadcasters annual event in April,
and will be available to broadcasters by the fall. "Broadcasters are looking
for all kinds of ways to generate revenue on the local level," Papanicolaou
said. "The FlexiCoder-with its multichannel SDTV and HDTV capabilities, as
well as the built-in reliability based on redundancy and hot-swappable I/O
boards-will allow them to choose the best configuration for generating digital
TV over the air."
By the end of 2001, according to a Harris Broadcast Division market
research poll, 65 percent of all U.S. TV stations expect to be producing local
digital-TV news.Today, 68 percent of U.S. stations produce local news. |
