Harmonic has announced details of the newest generation of its Electra line with the launch of the Electra X family of advanced media processors.
The company is billing the Electra X encoders for broadcast and multiscreen content delivery as the world’s first encoder family to support graphics, branding and playout functionalities, as well as full-frame Ultra HD (UHD) live encoding.
“Building on the success of our industry-leading compression family, the Electra X media processors offer a dramatic new approach to encoding,” said Bart Spriester, senior vice president, video products, Harmonic in a statement. “The Electra X simplifies content delivery operations, enabling video content and service providers to offer linear and multiscreen services from low bandwidth profiles all the way up to UHD, plus the additional function integration can have a profound impact when deploying new services.”
The new Electra X products include the Electra X2, a one RU media processor, and the Electra X3, a two RU processor that can support UHD formats up to 2160p60.
Both use the Harmonic Pure Compression Engine and boost video compression efficiency using a variety of formats and codecs, including MPEG-2, AVC, and HEVC codecs,
The company notes that unlike other UHD compression solutions on the market, which contain multiple logical encoders, the Electra X3 is the industry’s first production-ready, full-frame UHD encoder in a single 2-RU appliance.
Spriester also explained that “by converging broadcast and multiscreen encoding with the graphics and branding from Harmonic’s Spectrum ChannelPort, plus transport stream playout functionality, onto a single, compact appliance, Electra X2 reduces the number of devices required to build a broadcast transmission chain. This approach lowers capital and operating expenditures, resulting in exceptionally low total cost of ownership.”
