IP Prime developer SES Americom today announced the general availability of its MPEG-4 high-definition television service, the IP-Prime HD-4. With the solution, operators already delivering television using MPEG-2 technology can deploy 32 channels of MPEG-4 HDTV within 60 days and can be scaled to add more HD programming. The single-rack solution lets IP Prime customers improve their broadcast efficiency over their existing networks.

“The genesis of this came out in the last six months with talking to our EchoSystem partners, middleware and set-top suppliers and realizing that some of them have a relatively large installed base out there of MPEG-2 systems,” said Walt Davis, IP Prime product manager at SES Americom. “The early adopters have been doing this for a couple of years now -- humming along with MPEG-2 standard def, and here comes the HD tsunami taking them by surprise. There are some real issues with trying to add a quality HD service onto an existing MPEG-2 system that they were struggling with.”

To address these issues, HD-4 adds an MPEG-4 service layer on top of telcos’ existing MPEG-2 network, where the bandwidth to the home presently does not permit the delivery of HD signals in MPEG-2 format. As subscribers sign up for the new HDTV service, the operator will provide them with new set-top boxes (STBs) that decode both MPEG-4 and MPEG-2 signals.

The process is fairly simple for telcos, Davis said, because most already have a satellite antenna in place. As long as they can see the IP Prime satellite AMC9 in the arc, only one single-rack unit must be installed in addition to consumers’ existing STB. The output of the rack is 32 IP-encapsulated HD streams. IP Prime is partnering with STB vendor Entone and others to facilitate the delivery of the service.

The entire IP Prime solution, unveiled in June, is prepackaged for SES Americom’s customers, many of which are rural providers. The turnkey service includes transport, head-ends and STBs over a centralized satellite-based distribution system, or a programming-only solution for those telcos that have their own facilities. The HD-4 is what Davis called a reduced equipment configuration that operators can add to IP Prime to utilize when they migrate to a complete MPEG-4 service on their own timeline.

“We want to provide an offensive service to telcos to not just stop erosion or churn, but actually to acquire new customers and improve their ARPU,” Davis said.

There are currently hundreds of telecom carriers offering MPEG-2-based television that they have invested heavily in. Especially in the case of rural providers, many cannot afford a wholesale change. The investment in the head-end alone can cost almost one million dollars. Considering this, services like IP Prime’s that work within telcos’ existing networks are becoming a more viable solution. In late September, Motorola announced a similar product, the DSR-6000 series receiver that allows networks to use both MPEG-4 AVC and MPEG-2 compression technologies, as well as convert content into MPEG-2 for operators with MPEG-2 set-tops.

What makes IP Prime’s solution unique, Davis said, is that the company has moved the whole encoding process into a single facility located in Vernon Valley. For telcos, the choice to transcode their national channels on their own instead of through a service like HD-4 is very much a build versus buy decision, he said.

“We take all the national channels and have channel rights to do the MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 conversions in our facility, and then pitch the channels in native MPEG-4,” Davis said. “So if a telco is looking at whether they should do it themselves or go with IP Prime, one of the questions is, how are they going to do all the transcoding themselves? It is very expensive to operate.”

IP Prime is targeting new customers wanting to make the transition with this new service. At TelcoTV in October, the company announced that its IP Prime service was in trial deployment by three of the original five beta-test companies. The remaining two, along with a second class of five more customers, including three also announced at TelcoTV, will begin IP Prime trials around the start of next year. All of these companies will be entering the market on IP Prime’s MPEG-4 HD network.