Virgin Media chooses Harmonic for Olympics

Harmonic has announced that UK cable operator Virgin Media has selected a complete range of Harmonic (Stand S10) video processing solutions to power its HD channel delivery in the UK, including HD coverage of the 2012 London Olympic Games from the BBC.

Utilising a combination of Harmonic’s Electra 8000 universal encoders, ProStream 1000 Multiplexer, NMX Digital Service Manager, and Iris advanced video analytics software suite, Virgin Media will deliver 24 HD BBC Olympic Channels dedicated solely to Olympic Games coverage.

Neil Drennan, director of TV engineering at Virgin Media said, “With a full range of live channels in HD from the BBC, Virgin Media customers are going to be spoilt with a superb experience for watching the 2012 London Olympics. Harmonic is delivering a range of high-density video systems with outstanding video quality and, thanks to Harmonic’s high-performance yet bandwidth-saving encoding and management software solutions, our TV customers can now watch even more live sports coverage in breathtaking HD quality.”

During the Olympic Games, the BBC will supply Virgin Media with the live HD Olympic Channels. The content will be encoded by Harmonic’s Electra 8000 encoder, which supports both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AVC compression, enabling Virgin Media to deliver video to subscribers via Virgin Media’s infrastructure.