Harmonic Powers Virgin Media MPEG-DASH Trial

Live Demo of the Dynamic Adaptive Streaming Workflow Featuring Harmonic ProMedia™ Multiscreen Solutions Will be on Display at ANGA COM 2013

Harmonic Inc. (NASDAQ: HLIT), the worldwide leader in video delivery infrastructure, today announced that Virgin Media (NASDAQ: VMED; LSE: VMED), the first provider of all four broadband, TV, mobile phone and home phone services in the UK, has deployed Harmonic’s ProMedia™ Suite for a trial of the new Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (MPEG-DASH) protocol. Utilizing Harmonic’s ProMedia™ Live real-time transcoder and ProMedia Package stream packager in its innovations research headend facility in London, Virgin Media can deliver more efficient and cost-effective high-quality broadcasts to TVs, PCs, tablets, smartphones, set-top boxes, and other IP-connected devices. A live demo of the MPEG-DASH workflow will be showcased at the Harmonic booth located in Hall 10.1, stand S10, at ANGA COM 2013, June 4-6, in Cologne, Germany.

Dale Barnes, director of advanced technologies and innovation at Virgin Media said, “As part of an integrated headend solution, Harmonic’s ProMedia Suite optimizes multiscreen delivery by eliminating the need to separately encode, encrypt, store, and transport each piece of video content to ensure compatibility with multiple HTTP delivery formats. The demo at ANGA COM will highlight the operational efficiencies achieved by implementing an MPEG-DASH-based workflow for next-generation multiscreen services converging on one ABR format, and unifying multiscreen delivery for tablets, PC’s, smartphones in addition to set-top boxes and Smart TV’s.”

Harmonic’s ProMedia Live transcodes MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AVC H.264 content to multiple high-quality adaptive bit-rate streams optimized for the Virgin Media MPEG-DASH service. In addition, ProMedia Live efficiently handles metadata information such as language, captions, and ad signaling upon input and output. ProMedia Live is integrated with Harmonic’s ProMedia Package, streamlining encapsulation and encryption processes. Completely software-based, the flexible, high-performance solution can scale to support hundreds of simultaneous streams, simplifying the deployment of the multiscreen services.

“Harmonic is a leading member of the DASH Industry Forum and has participated in numerous MPEG-DASH trials and the first commercial service over the last year. We’re excited to partner with Virgin Media in supporting the industry’s most advanced standard for streaming multimedia content,” said Ian Graham, vice president of sales, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, Harmonic. “Attendees at ANGA COM 2013 are encouraged to stop by the booth to witness the future of multiscreen delivery.”