Sunnyvale, California-based FutureTel Inc and Chronicle Broadcasting, the NBC affiliate in the San Francisco Bay Area and creator of the BayTV local cable channel, have formed a partnership to deliver BayTV to various cities using MPEG 1 digital video and T-1 telephony technology. The cable delivery system provides 24-hour broadcasting to some of the Bay Area cities and incorporates FutureTel hardware and software, including the PrimeView MPEG 1 encoder board and the TeleMux network interface board. The BayTV digital video broadcast system comprises an MPEG 1 encode personal computer and multiple transmitting personal computers. On the receiving end, cable headends use a device that combines a T-1 interface and MPEG 1 decoder. The MPEG1 encode personal computer, located at the Chronicle Broadcasting facilities, takes in analogue audio and video signals, digitises and compresses the analogue NTSC studio feed into an MPEG-compatible stream, then broadcasts the resulting signal over Ethernet. The transmitting personal computers take the incoming signal from Ethernet and transmit the signal over the T-1 line to the cable head-ends. At that point, the receiving station accepts the digital stream and decodes the signal into broadcast-ready analogue for distribution over the remote cable system. The PrimeView MPEG compression engine is powered by VideoRISC processors from C-Cube Microsystems Inc, and provides full-motion, full-colour television-quality digital video and CD-quality audio.
