Stofa chooses Appear TV Transcoding Headends for Major Channel Expansion

June 11 2012 - Appear TV, a leading global provider of next-generation head-ends for broadcast and IP television, today announced that it has collaborated with long-standing partner Stofa, the triple play Danish cable operator, to expand Stofa’s service offering through provision of Appear TV’s transcoding solutions. The project, which is now live, has MPEG-2 services received at Stofa’s media centre by satellite, the 180 channels are transcoded to MPEG-4 and groomed by Appear TV’s Transcoding Head-Ends and then distributed to Stofa’s cable customers over its existing network.

“The implementation of Appear TV’s transcoding head-end solution allows us to simply and efficiently increase our cable content portfolio by taking 180 satellite channels, transcode and then use our existing network to distribute to our cable customers,” said Thomas Helbo, CTO, Stofa. “We chose the Appear TV transcoding solution because it is the most flexible, high-density solution on the market. If our business model changes it’s easy to add more modules or deploy new functionality through adding a different type of module. We look forward to Appear TV continuing to provide us with solutions that will be able to match and support our innovative platform strategy.” 

The Appear TV designed and manufactured high-density transcoder modules are combined with the Appear TV carrier-class 4RU chassis to create a compact, robust transcoding power with leading class flexibility, density and power currently available.

“Stofa was one of our first clients 8 years ago, so it’s really fitting that it should be one of the first companies to adopt our new powerful Transcoding Head-End solution,” says Carl Walter-Holst, CEO, Appear TV. “I’m delighted that our simple to deploy and run transcoding head-end solution has enabled Stofa to provide its viewers with a significant increase in the number of channels delivered, helping the operator to drive its long-term success. I look forward to Appear TV continuing to provide Stofa with innovative solutions that enable the cable operator to stay ahead of the competition.” 

For over 50 years, Stofa has developed a strategic relationship to around 300 antenna associations in Denmark and has a cable-TV customer base of approximately 400,000 households, a high speed broadband customer base of 175,000 and a VoIP customer base of 45,000.

Source: http://cablequest.org/news/technology-news/item/900-stofa-chooses-appear-tv-transcoding-headends-for-major-channel-expansion.html