(24 May 2006 8:00 pm)

MUMBAI: Scientific Atlanta, a Cisco company, has expanded its support for video transport of the upcoming 2006 Fifa World Cup Germany matches to include high-definition (HD) encoding and delivery of video to German national broadcaster ARD/ZDF.

Scientific Atlanta announced in 2005 that its iLYNX video adaptation platform had been chosen to support live video feeds from 12 German football stadiums to an International Broadcast Center (IBC) in Munich for distribution to soccer fans around the world.

The new video transport project will use additional iLYNX systems to connect three ARD/ZDF regional broadcast centers with the IBC for delivery of coverage across Germany. More than 30 Scientific Atlanta HD encoders (Model D9050) will be used at the venues and in the IBC to deliver compressed HD video streams to maximise bandwidth use over the iLYNX platform and for satellite distribution worldwide.

"Video compression, contribution and distribution are complex tasks, and MPEG encoding of HD video is even more demanding. Our decades of video transport experience, local presence in Europe and past successes with other 2006 Fifa World Cup projects give us the insight and ability to deploy a high-performance, all-in-one compression, aggregation and network adaptation platform, and encoding solution that can deliver an exciting entertainment experience for viewers across Germany and around the world," said Scientific Atlanta Europe managing director of transmission networks Bart Spriester.

In addition to the iLYNX platform and D9050 HD encoders, the nationwide transport network will use Scientific-Atlanta's Rosa server-client network management for the 2006 Fifa World Cup video and audio feeds to manage and control any Scientific Atlanta equipment.