EBU chooses TANDBERG for sports coverage

by Alan Harten

TANDBERG Television, part of the Ericsson Group has announced that it is providing a range of MPEG-2 video compression technologies to the European Broadcast Union (EBU), the world’s largest contribution network, for coverage of a strong line-up of high profile sporting events this summer.

TANDBERG Television’s digital TV systems provide delivery of footage of both standard definition (SD) and high definition (HD) sports action from the 2008 Olympic Games from Beijing and the Tour de France, Roland Garros and Wimbledon, as well as all the most prominent football events of the season, to more than 650 million viewers in 56 countries in and around Europe.

This premium sports content will be distributed to all EBU members over both satellite and fiber networks using a range of TANDBERG Television encoders and professional receivers.

The system is enabled to support the latest DVB-S2 standard and to efficiently manage bandwidth for the most cost-effective delivery of the content.

The deal builds on TANDBERG Television’s long-standing association with the EBU, which has seen a close collaboration between the two organizations for almost 10 years.

The EBU’s relationship with TANDBERG Television started with the digitization of the organization’s satellite network in 1998 and the deployment of the world’s first 4:2:2 contribution system from TANDBERG Television.

Since that time the organization has made a number of steps using TANDBERG Television technologies including expanding network capacity through the use of fiber, and more recently increasing satellite capacity, with the introduction of the latest DVB-S2 standard that has been pioneered by TANDBERG Television.

With increasing demand for material encoded in multiple formats, including MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AVC in both HD and SD, the EBU has selected a range of equipment from TANDBERG Television, including the E5782 MPEG-2 4:2:2 HD encoders and TANDBERG E5710 MPEG-2 SD encoders that offer an upgrade path from MPEG-2 SD to MPEG-4 AVC SD and HD.

Also included are a number of TANDBERG TT1260 MPEG-2 4:2:2 Professional Receivers featuring DVB-S2, to ensure the most efficient distribution over satellite, and the RX1290 Multi-Format Professional Receivers which are able to receive both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AVC HD and SD services.

The EBU is the largest professional association of national broadcasters in the world.

Headquartered in Geneva, and working on behalf of its members in the European area, the EBU negotiates broadcasting rights for major sports events, operates the Eurovision and Euroradio networks, organizes program exchanges, stimulates and coordinates co-productions, and provides a full range of other operational, commercial, technical, legal and strategic services.

The EBU was founded in February 1950 by the pioneers of radio and television in Western Europe.

Today, in addition to 75 active members in 56 countries of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, the Union has 45 associate members in 29 countries further afield.

TANDBERG Television Details
TANDBERG Television, part of the Ericsson Group, delivers multimedia technology including compression systems, on-demand or content distribution.

The company’s solutions are used by the leading broadcasters, operators and programmers.

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