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May 2009 Digital Rapids Powers 40-Channel Streaming Infrastructure for China's Phoenix Television
phtv.ifeng.com
Mandarin Chinese broadcaster Phoenix Television is using 40 Digital Rapids encoding and streaming systems as part of a new infrastructure for the monitoring of live feeds by reporters, editors and other internal personnel.
Based in Hong Kong, Phoenix Television has five television channels, and aims to promote a free flow of information and entertainment within the Greater China region. Being on good terms with the People's Republic of China government, it is one of the few non-government related television broadcasters available to mainland Chinese audience and has been able to broadcast information about events not covered by the government media.
40 Digital Rapids hardware and software systems take live inputs from downlink satellite feeds and in-house studios, creating low-resolution and high-resolution streams from each in the Microsoft Windows Media (also known as VC-1) compression format. The resulting streams are multicast over Phoenix TV’s internal network to PC-based clients and set-top boxes (STBs). Low-resolution streams, at a data rate of 300Kbps, are viewed through customisable, multi-channel, mosaic-style displays on PC clients. The 4Mbps high-resolution streams are viewed full-screen on PCs or through set-top boxes for viewing on large-screen LCD monitors.
"The Digital Rapids solutions provided the flexibility we needed to support our requirements and to integrate with our third-party middleware from SyQic," said Mr. Wicky Law, Engineering Manager at Phoenix Television. "The move to IP-based streaming from the RF-based system we had at our previous building also brings our users additional flexibility, allowing customisable monitoring selections and layouts on their PCs. We look forward to continuing to work with Digital Rapids as we plan future expansion with additional internal channels."
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