Hunan Cable Group Adds HD and On-Demand Services Using Harmonic Video Solutions

Chinese MSO Deploys Harmonic’s Award-Winning MPEG-4 AVC Compression, Stream Processing, EdgeQAM and Network Management Systems

BEIJING — CCBN Stand #2404 – Harmonic Inc. (NASDAQ: HLIT) today announced that Hunan Cable Group, the leading cable provider in China’s Hunan Province with more than five million subscribers, has launched a new HDTV service and expanded its on-demand offering, powered by Harmonic’s market-leading digital video delivery solutions. Systems deployed by Hunan Cable include Harmonic’s Ion™ AVC HD multi-channel encoders, ProStream™ 1000 stream processing platform with DiviTrackIP™ statistical multiplexing, NSG™ 9000 universal edgeQAMs, and NMX Digital Service Manager™. Hunan Cable Group is the first provincial-level cable network in China to provide HDTV services.

“Performance and reliability were key criteria in selecting the technology for our new HDTV and on-demand systems. Harmonic’s digital video solutions met and exceeded these requirements,” said Li Tu, Director of the Technical Center at Hunan Cable Group. “We now have in place a powerful, high-quality infrastructure that enables us to offer our customers a very compelling TV experience.”

This deployment provides Hunan Cable Group with a fully integrated IP headend, encompassing compression, statistical multiplexing, scrambling, VOD edge processing and network management. Harmonic’s compact, power-efficient MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) HD encoders deliver up to four channels within a single 1-RU chassis, lowering operating expenditures while enhancing video quality. The modular 1-RU ProStream 1000 stream processing platform handles MPEG-2 re-encoding, multiplexing, scrambling, and advanced processing of the MPEG streams.

Harmonic’s industry-leading NSG 9000 universal edgeQAM platform provides reliable edge processing for the VOD services, while supporting expanded high-speed data services. NMX Digital Service Manager offers Hunan Cable Group a powerful set of tools for network configuration, management and automated redundancy.

“HDTV continues to gain momentum in China, as demonstrated by Hunan Cable Group’s new service rollout,” said Raymond Tse, Vice President of Asia Pacific Sales at Harmonic Inc. “Hunan Cable Group is also a customer of Harmonic’s HFC access technologies, and with this project, Harmonic is providing them with the latest generation H.264 and VOD technologies as part of a comprehensive, integrated video delivery network architecture.”

Harmonic will be displaying its industry-leading digital video and HFC access solutions at stand #2404 during the CCBN 2010 Expo taking place March 23-25 in Beijing.