Denver -- On-demand management-software provider Vertasent and digital-video-technology supplier Harmonic have teamed up to support an open-standards-based architecture for switched-digital video.
At a demo staged at Harmonic’s booth at the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers’ Cable-Tec Expo here, the two companies are showing how two-way communications linking a widely deployed set-top box and electronic program guide can provide data to help operators decide which programs should be made available on each switched digital node.
The solution is based on a system Vertasent and Harmonic already developed for on-demand video-delivery systems.
In the switched-digital version, Vertasent’s “Switched Video Manager” links to Harmonic “NSG 8108,” “NSG 9116” and “NSG 9000” edge quadrature-amplitude modulators, which sit at the switch node and are responsible for firing off video streams to customers.
“Traditional switched-digital-video systems require the installation of dedicated or customized edge QAMs,” Vertasent vice president of marketing Bruce Bradley said. “Our work with the highly flexible NSG has enabled a solution allowing switched video to be deployed using excess capacity of the installed base of VOD edge QAMs. Sharing these resources greatly reduces cost to the cable operator.”
