Thompson Advances its TV-over-ADSL Activities

Nextream, a joint venture between Alcatel and Thomson, has developed a real-time MPEG2 encoder that enables the low bit-rate compression required to broadcast TV content over ADSL. Thompson said the encoder reduces the bandwidth requirement to less than 2.5 Mbps for picture quality equivalent to satellite services. A satellite version (DVB-S) of this encoder is already in use by numerous broadcast operators. Thompson has also developed a set-top box that allows TV program reception over ADSL networks. The Thompson equipment is being tested by the TF1 group project, code named "Dream TV," which provides 24 TV channels over ADSL to 200 households in Paris. Thompson is also participating with Alcatel in a Video on Demand (VOD) over ADSL project by Monaco Telecom.
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