Tandberg and Microsoft to collaborate

Tandberg Television and Microsoft Corp have announced they will collaborate to offer professional broadcast solutions supporting Windows Media 9 Series for the professional broadcast industry.
Tandberg Television is developing a dedicated real-time hardware-based encoding platform for Windows Media, based on Windows Media Audio and Video 9 Series. Tandberg Television and Microsoft also are collaborating at a number of levels, including engineering and sales and marketing. The results of this cooperation will be demonstrated for the first time at IBC 2002 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
"There is a huge need within the broadcast and broadband industries for delivery platforms that offer the highest quality audio and video at the lowest data rate to save bandwidth costs and enable greater subscriber reach," said Gwyn Pugh, CEO of Tandberg Television. "Windows Media Video 9 Series is a technology break-through that when integrated with our real-time implementation makes the delivery of broadcast quality video at bit-rates as low as 1Mbits per second a reality."
With the transition from analogue to digital accelerating, the broadcast and broadband worlds are increasingly driven by a common goal: to deliver the best quality at the lowest cost. This new cooperation between Tandberg Television and Microsoft will give operators the flexibility to use Windows Media 9 Series either as the basis for an end-to-end IP-based broadcast and video on demand (VOD) network, or enhancing existing DVB and MPEG-based broadcast networks with higher quality at lower data rates compared with current standards-based compression technologies. The technology also provides a low-latency encoding solution required by the professional broadcast industry.
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