Seans Media builds India's first H.264-based cable service with Envivio video head-end compression solution

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, USA: Envivio announced that Seans Media—a subsidiary of Aerolex Cablenet and a leading digital cable TV service provider in Bangalore, India—has used an Envivio video head-end to launch India’s first digital cable service featuring high-efficiency H.264 video encoding.

Compared to traditional MPEG-2, the Envivio head-end reduces the amount of bandwidth Seans Media needs to deliver each of its channels to subscribers, freeing capacity for the service to expand its HD and SD channel lineup, while maintaining the highest quality video to satisfy its discriminating customers.

“The Envivio head-end gives us a significant competitive advantage,” said Pratap Wadhwa, managing director of Seans Media. “Increasing the number and variety of channels we offer is important for attracting and retaining subscribers. The excellent video quality delivered by Envivio’s compression system ensures that they love the way the service looks.”

Seans Media is able to deliver each channel using as little as 1.6 Mbps without impacting video quality even for demanding content like live sports channels thanks to the Envivio video head-end. The all IP design of the Envivio system, along with the ability to directly ingest baseband video, eliminates the need for costly, quality-impacting interfaces. The solution also provides Seans Media with the flexibility to adapt to future requirements. Envivio encoders support all Three Screens of consumer video—TVs, PCs and mobile devices—from a single platform with the ability to take multiple channels of content and encode them simultaneously to deliver multiple mobile TV profiles, multiple Internet TV profiles, or SD and HD IPTV profiles.

“Seans Media has made an important investment in customer satisfaction,” said Envivio President and CEO Julien Signès, “ensuring that they will deliver the variety of entertainment its customers want while ensuring outstanding picture quality for both its SD and HD channels. The Envivio head-end addresses their current goals while providing a solid foundation for the introduction of exciting new services in the future.”

Envivio head-end solutions provide cable operators with the flexibility and capability they need to compete in an increasingly diverse marketplace. Advanced compression liberates bandwidth, enabling operators to increase the variety of HD and SD channels they deliver over their existing network infrastructure. Envivio Convergence head-ends are a solid foundation for expansion, providing support for delivery of high quality video to mobile phone and Internet-connected devices.