Red Intercable's Dibox Digital Cable TV Service in Argentina Utilizes Harmonic's H.264 Video Solutions

Tuesday, September 25th, 2007
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IP-Based Headend Solution Includes DiviCom® Electra™ Encoders, DiviTrackIP™ Statistical Multiplexing, Broadcast Network Gateway™ and NMX Digital Service Manager™

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Harmonic Inc. (NASDAQ:HLIT) today announced that Red Intercable S.A., a leading content aggregator and video service provider for more than 235 independent cable operators in Argentina, has deployed Harmonic’s IP-based MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) digital video systems for the dibox national digital television service. Red Intercable is one of the world’s first cable service providers to deploy H.264-based standard definition (SD) video compression, a solution which enables the delivery of ultra-high quality video while enhancing bandwidth efficiency.

The new headend implemented at Red Intercable includes the DiviCom® Electra™ 5400 SD H.264 encoders and ProStream™ 1000 stream processing platform with DiviTrackIP™ distributed statistical multiplexing to more efficiently compress video services, which are then sent via satellite uplink to remote sites around the country. Harmonic’s Broadcast Network Gateways™ are used at the local operator site to format, remultiplex and modulate the streams across the HFC network and the entire video headend infrastructure is managed by Harmonic’s NMX Digital Service Manager™. Harmonic is also providing system integration and training services.

“This new deployment opens the door to the digital world for cable operators throughout Argentina,” said José Toledo, President of Red Intercable S.A. “Harmonic’s Electra H.264 encoders and DiviTrackIP statistical multiplexing are proven technologies, backed by Harmonic’s expertise and experience in providing world-class digital video solutions. By using these high performance, high quality H.264 compression systems, we can offer a reliable and efficient infrastructure for the cost-effective delivery of digital TV services to the subscribers served by our consortium of local operators.”

“Increasing competition between video service providers necessitates the expansion and enhancement of the service offering and the implementation of a more flexible IP-based infrastructure,” said Gil Katz, Director of Cable Solutions and Strategy for Harmonic Inc. “The combination of Harmonic’s latest generation Electra encoders and DiviTrackIP statistical multiplexing improves bandwidth efficiency, adds more channels to the lineup and provides better picture quality to Red Intercable’s subscribers. Today, Harmonic’s compression solutions are preferred by the world’s leading cable, satellite, telco and terrestrial service providers, including nine of the top ten cable operators in the United States and seven of the ten largest satellite operators worldwide.”

Harmonic’s market-leading one rack-unit (1-RU) Electra encoders support multi-channel and multi-format delivery for up to four full resolution and four simultaneous low resolution video outputs in HD H.264, SD H.264 or SD MPEG-2. Harmonic’s DiviTrackIP distributed statistical multiplexing further enhances bandwidth efficiency of Electra variable bit-rate (VBR) encoders by allowing bandwidth to be dynamically allocated among geographically dispersed encoders according to complexity of the content.