Alabama Public Television selected Telairity’s BE8100 H.264/AVC high-definition encoder to solve the challenge of transmitting HD programming from its production headquarters in Montgomery, Ala., to its control center in Birmingham.
APT operates a network of nine TV stations throughout the state. Its production studio, located at WAIQ-TV in Montgomery, produces programs including “Capital Journal,” “Alabama Stories” and “Face To Face.” A Network Operations Center, which distributes programming via satellite to its stations around the state, is located at WBIQ-TV in Birmingham. The link between these two sites is limited to a maximum bandwidth of 6 Mbps.
Windell Wood, APT director of engineering, said the company started investigating advanced forms of compression because MPEG-2 wasn’t going to cut it. The company selected Telairity’s H.264/AVC compression product because it was affordable and did a “beautiful job of compression” at the target bit rate of 6 Mbps.
The Telairity BE8100 is a scalable, fully programmable, low latency broadcast encoder for HD video compression. It combines MPEG-4 compression technology with encode latency of less than 150 ms. It features an “instant on” for immediate availability and a “two button” front-panel control.
“Not only has the Telairity BE8100 met all our expectations for video quality and reliability, but the support from Telairity has been excellent. Their response time in answering technical questions is second to none,” Wood said.
