Telekom Austria customers become first HEVC pay TV players in Europe

Telekom Austria has completed the upgrade of its white-label DTH satellite platform to the HEVC/H.265 compression format for the Czech and Slovak markets.

All video streams on the Telekom Austria direct2home platform for these two markets are now being encoded with HEVC, with High-Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding (HE-AAC) for the audio streams.

To complete the transition, the DTH pay TV operators in the Czech Republic and Slovakia running their services on direct2home had to swap out the complete installed base of their set-top-boxes with HEVC-ready devices. The move makes the platform and its local pay TV partners in the two countries the first HEVC platform in Europe.

Telekom Austria said that the move would not only improve the efficient use of bandwidth and improve video and audio quality but would free up capacity for the addition of more HD and HHD T services, resulting in a more compelling line-up of services.

The telco tapped Harmonic to provide its Electra X2 Advanced Media Processor technology for the upgrade.

“We announced the launch of our white-label direct2home platform exactly four years ago during IBC. Being the newcomer in the industry has had its own advantages. It has allowed us to adopt agile business models and partner with the most innovative and advanced technology vendors. Now, four years later, we are proud to announce that we operate the first HEVC DTH platform in Europe, we enable five DTH pay-TV operators on direct2home and host more than one million records on our multi-tenant Conditional Access System,” said Stanislav Georgiev, head of media broadcasting, Telekom Austria Group.