Thomson Anchors Aussie Mobile-TV Trial

Vendor Teams Up with Broadcast Australia on Test in Greater Sydney Area

By Glen Dickson -- Broadcasting & Cable, 8/22/2007 4:16:00 PM

Thomson is working with Broadcast Australia to test a five-channel mobile-TV service across the greater Sydney area.

The service, which uses the DVB-H mobile-TV-transmission standard, is being compressed with Thomson's DVB-H encoding platform and encrypted with conditional-access technology from Irdeto (http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6340805.html). It can be received on any DVB-H capable mobile device equipped with Irdeto's decoding technology.

There are five channels in the trial service -- CNN, children’s service Boomerang and three national channels: ABC, ABC2 and SBS. They are encoded using the Thomson Mobile TV encoder, based on a powerful hardware platform with advanced pre-processing filters, multiple codec support and multistream generation. The statistical encoding capabilities of the Mobile TV encoder are used in conjunction with Opal statistical time slicing to ensure that the best use is made of the available bandwidth while preserving video quality.

“The Thomson DVB-H encoding platform is able to offer scrambling capabilities, multi-MNO services and statistical encoding” said Martin Farrimond, Broadcast Australia’s general manager for mobile television, in a statement. “The platform is pre-integrated with Irdeto conditional access. This is a further phase of Australian mobile-TV trials, and it is designed to ensure that a well-informed decision is made regarding selection of the best solution for the eventual commercial mobile-TV service.”

Thomson is also providing the trial with its SmartVision Mobile TV service platform, which manages subscriber, services and system configuration and also automatically delivers a live electronic service guide.