ANGA CABLE 2012 – Cologne. Appear TV has announced that Vodafone Portugal has deployed its modular head-end chassis architecture, combining analogue RF and COFDM modulation modules. This solution is a powerful and efficient method of providing subscribers access to both analogue SD and digital HD services over Vodafone’s FTTH network.
The Appear TV solution is now live, after being deployed at Vodafone’s media centres in Lisbon and Porto. The solution provides a total of 70 SD and HD TV channels over the existing Vodafone IP FTTH network.
This deployment was designed and deployed by Appear TV’s business partner Satcab, a system integrator of professional broadcast solutions and services, working closely with Vodafone Portugal’s engineering team. The solution provides SD services as analogue RF and uses the DVB-T tuner of today’s flat panel HD TVs to decode the COFDM modulated HD services, improving access to new services by improved utilization of the existing network.
“The modular approach of the Appear TV HE architecture and the features of its advanced RF and COFDM modulation functionality enabled us to build a solution that uses the capacity of the Vodafone FTTH network to reduce the number of set-top boxes deployed, a great benefit to both us and our customers,” said Jorge Bento, director of products and services, Vodafone.
”Not only do we increase efficiency by supporting analogue and digital services from one IP head-end, but we also simplify providing SD and HD to multiple TVs in the home, a useful advantage in Portugal, where the average number of TV sets is three per household.”
“This exciting and unique deployment, distributing simulcast digital and analogue TV services over the Vodafone FTTH network, is made viable by the flexibility of our modular IP head-end design, enabling our solution to support multiple modulation schemes in one IP head-end,” said Thomas Lind, technical director, Appear TV. “I look forward to supporting Vodafone Portugal’s exciting FTTH service and expect that this approach will be of interest to other digital cable and FTTH operators, particularly in countries, such as Portugal, with a high number of TVs per household.”
