EBU Selects TANDBERG Television for a Summer of Sport

TANDBERG
Television is providing a range of MPEG-2 video compression technologies to the
European Broadcast Union (EBU), the world’s largest contribution network, for
coverage of a strong line-up of high profile sporting events this summer. TANDBERG Television’s digital TV systems have already been and will continue to
play a key role in the delivery of footage of both standard definition (SD) and
high definition (HD) sports action from the 2008 Olympic Games from Beijing and
the Tour de France, Roland Garros and Wimbledon, as well as all the most
prominent football events of the season to more than 650 million viewers in 56
countries in and around Europe.

This premium sports content will be distributed to all EBU members over both
satellite and fiber networks using a range of TANDBERG Television encoders and
professional receivers. The system is enabled to support the latest DVB-S2
standard and to efficiently manage bandwidth for the most cost-effective
delivery of the content. The deal builds on TANDBERG Television’s long-standing
association with the EBU which has seen a close collaboration between the two
organizations for almost 10 years.

“We have a strong relationship with TANDBERG Television and have
continually combined the company’s industry leading technology with our own
engineering excellence to make the EBU network one of the most advanced and
efficient in the world,” says Paolo Pusterla, Head of Strategy and
Business Development for the EBU. “With plenty of action, fast camera
panning and detailed zooming, TV coverage of many sporting events is the most
demanding content to capture. With millions of viewers throughout the globe
watching these events it is essential that the equipment we use will deliver
the best quality results faultlessly. Based on our 10 year history with
TANDBERG Television we can be sure their technology will deliver from the
winning sprint to the final whistle.”

The EBU’s relationship with TANDBERG Television started with the digitization
of the organization’s satellite network in 1998 and the deployment of the
world’s first 4:2:2 contribution system from TANDBERG Television. Since that
time the organization has made a number of advanced steps using TANDBERG
Television technologies including expanding network capacity through the use of
fiber, and more recently increasing satellite capacity with the introduction of
the latest DVB-S2 standard that has been pioneered by TANDBERG Television.

With increasing demand for material encoded in multiple formats, including
MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AVC in both HD and SD, the EBU has selected a range of
equipment from TANDBERG Television, including the TANDBERG E5782 MPEG-2 4:2:2
HD encoders and TANDBERG E5710 MPEG-2 SD encoders that offer an upgrade path
from MPEG-2 SD to MPEG-4 AVC SD and HD. Also included are a number of TANDBERG
TT1260 MPEG-2 4:2:2 Professional Receivers featuring DVB-S2, to ensure the most
efficient distribution over satellite, and award-winning TANDBERG RX1290
Multi-Format Professional Receivers which are able to receive both MPEG-2 and
MPEG-4 AVC HD and SD services.

“We are honored to be working with the EBU and to be able to put our name
to such prestigious sports events such the Tour De France and the Beijing
Olympics. This promises to be a summer of endless sports action, generating
tremendous global interest where almost anything can happen – and when it does,
we’ll have it covered,” explains Eric Baron, President of TANDBERG
Television EMEA. “We are constantly striving to develop and enhance our
product portfolio so that broadcasters and service providers the world over can
rely on us to deliver live, uninterrupted coverage of the most prestigious
events.”