ETEX Telephone Cooperative Launches IPTV and OTT Multiscreen Services

A few days ago, Harmonic (News - Alert), a video delivery firm, announced that ETEX Telephone Cooperative, a Northeast Texas telecommunications provider powered by Harmonic ProStream® 1000 with ACE® transcoding and ProMedia™ Package adaptive stream preparation systems, has launched IPTV (News - Alert) and OTT multiscreen services.

By minimizing bandwidth constraints across the provider's IP network and leveraging adaptive bit rate technology, Harmonic's high-density and scalable video infrastructure solutions help ETEX to cost-effectively deliver high-quality HD video services to a wide range of devices, including TVs, PCs, tablets, and smartphones. 

Patton (News - Alert) Knox, Network Engineer at ETEX Telephone Cooperative stated that to offer reliable IPTV and multiscreen services, prior to launching with the Harmonic solution, network bandwidth constraints made it impossible.

"Harmonic's ProStream 1000 with ACE video processing and transcoding system delivers excellent HD video quality at lower bit rates, allowing us to maximize efficiencies and costs while we roll out competitive triple-play IPTV, telephone, and wireless Internet multiscreen service offering," said Knox.

Of up to 20 HD or 60 SD channels for broadcast and 80 profiles for OTT multiscreen, ProStream 1000 with ACE real-time transcoding performs MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 video and audio transcoding. Optimizing bandwidth use for ETEX Telephone Cooperative's new service, the device also provides ASI to IP multiplexing and scrambling from a single 1-RU chassis.

From a single compressed SD/HD input, the any-to-any and any-to-many video/audio transcoding solution seamlessly prepares content for adaptive bit rate streaming to IPTV and OTT devices, enabling ETEX to generate broadcast television services and mobile/Web device profiles simultaneously.

Through reduced power consumption and rack space, ProStream 1000 with ACE's high-density design decreases capital and operating expenses. Since ETEX can support additional IPTV channels and value-added content like HD video-on-demand in the future, ProStream's highly scalable architecture provides investment protection.

Allowing ETEX Telephone Cooperative to deliver secure OTT multiscreen video services efficiently, Harmonic's ProMedia Package carrier-grade adaptive stream preparation system combines multiple streams of H.264 video and associated audio into a variety of HTTP adaptive bit rate protocols.