At the IBC conference last week, BBC Broadcast staged a demonstration of one of the first MPEG-4 compressed HD broadcasts, using a dedicated channel simultaneously distributing both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AVC from its Broadcast Centre in West London to the RAI Exhibition and Congress Centre in Amsterdam.
The test channel was broadcast using the Eutelsat EUROBIRD1 satellite and included a variety of program types to demonstrate the benefits of HD. The transmission from the Broadcast Centre to IBC was made possible with help from systems integrator TSL, and the following equipment manufacturers: Axon, Miranda, Omnibus, Pro-Bel, Snell & Wilcox, Trilogy, JVC, Omneon, Pixel Power, Screen Subtitling Systems, Tektronix and Vistek.
TANDBERG Television supplied MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AVC HD encoders and professional receivers, with connectivity and uplink facilities being provided by Siemens.
Eutelsat provided a full transponder on EUROBIRD 1, and MPEG-4 HD receivers were supplied by Pace Micro Technology and Eldon Technology.
