FOR-A Supplies MPEG-4 HD Coders To Canal+

FOR-A UK has supplied the French broadcaster CANAL+ with Fujitsu IP-9500 MPEG-4 H.264 coders and decoders that were used in its HD coverage of the recent Summer Games.
The coders compress HD video into bit streams of 4 to 20 Mb/s. They are typically used at around 12-15 Mb/s for high quality HD contribution feeds that can travel as IP over the internet. Just such a circuit was used to send HD video of the 2007 Rugby World Cup from Paris to Tokyo and, this year, they played a vital role for the broadcaster's 2008 Summer Games coverage.
For the Summer Games CANAL+ took six 1080/50i HD-SDI feeds from its facilities in the International Broadcasting Centre and coded them using IP-9500 H.264 encoders at up to 20 Mb/s into DVB-ASI MPEG-2 transport streams.
These were transported on EBU multiplexed circuits to Paris where they were decoded using Fujitsu IP-9500D decoders. One decoder was also located at the Summer Games to provide a local confidence check. CANAL+ Project Leader Yves Cornu de la Fontaine commented: "We experienced perfect HD transmissions during the Summer Games with these codecs."
A refinement provided by Fujitsu for CANAL+ was to enable user assignment of AES and Dolby-E 5.1 digital audio to particular channels. This allowed CANAL+ to use its house format throughout the chain. They report experiencing perfect HD transmissions during the Summer Games with these codecs.
FOR-A distributes Fujitsu IP-9500 HD H.264 coders and decoders in Europe.
(KMcA)