As part of its plans to extend Digital TV services countrywide, Broadcast Service Danmark (BSD) has invested in a MPEG encoding and Internet Protocol (IP) video platform from Cisco. The investment will help BSD optimise its existing MPEG-2 digital terrestrial television (DTT) multiplex and meet the upcoming requirements of four new MPEG-4 nationwide DTT multiplexes in Denmark.
BSD provides terrestrial transmission services in Denmark, provides antenna and equipment leasing, construction, and maintenance for terrestrial broadcast networks, and offers operating and technical support services to the national broadcasters.
The new installation includes local and distributed IP statistical multiplexing, IP-based aggregation of services using cost-effective IP-based video transport within the BSD encoding and video processing facility. The need for multiple ASI routers and ASI aggregation multiplexers is reduced along with cabling requirements.
The IP video signals from the MPEG-4 AVC encoders are delivered to the Cisco Digital Content Manager (DCM) for creation of nationwide DTT multiplexes. The MPEG-4 AVC video channel bouquets are transmitted to the re-multiplexing facilities in Denmark, where each DTT multiplex will be completed by the insertion of correct Service Information (SI). The SI is produced by the ROSA SI Manager. In addition to handling the statistical multiplexing operations, the Cisco Digital Content Manager also introduces third-party conditional access to protect valuable programming.
"We have come to rely upon Cisco as a trusted advisor for collaboration on architectures that meet the needs of BSD and our broadcast customers," said BSD CEO Finn Søndergaard Pedersen. "The Cisco Digital Media and Broadcast team and our technical staff have created the right encoding and IP statistical multiplexing solution for our customers and created a final design that meets our critical business plan goals."
BSD is planning to install Cisco headends at a number of locations in preparation for the analogue switch-off in Denmark in November 2009.
