Hewlett-Packard Co says its new real-time MPEG encoding system, when coupled with its MediaStream Server to create a single digital video system, increases by 10 times the number of channels available to end users, without adding bandwidth. At the National Cable Television Association show in Dallas, Hewlett-Packard and BellSouth announced that BellSouth Corp would be the first HP MediaStream Server customer to install the encoding system, in time for its field trial – as reported, BellSouth is building a broadband network that could serve 12,000 subscribers in greater Atlanta, Georgia. BellSouth will digitise broadcast entertainment at its network’s head-end using the MPEG 1 encoding system, and combine them with the video-on-demand output from the HP MediaStream Server, onto a single optical fibre for direct digital broadcast over its Asynchronous Transfer Mode network. The entire system will be controlled from a single management station. Hewlett-Packard’s encoder compresses analogue composite video or Y/C and two audio channels into a digital format that enables service providers to create a video stream that can carry six to 10 times more channels than could be transmitted originally. Several modules can be combined into a system that provides multiple channels of digital, MPEG-compressed video from baseband satellite feeds or other analogue sources. MPEG-2 compression is expected to be available in the near future. Each four-channel module has a SONET OC-3c single-mode fibre interface to the service provider’s broadband distribution network. An optional Asynchrous Transfer Mode switch can be configured into the system. Cable ’95 is the first public showing of the HP MediaStream Server. Besides BellSouth, Pacific Telesis Video Services, Southern New England Telephone and Singapore Telecom are all using HP MediaStream Server in trials.
