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Fox has selected Motorola to provide the satellite transmission equipment, including compression systems, multiplexors, and radios. This will enable Fox to transition all its satellite programme distribution to 100 per cent High Definition (HD) delivery.

Fox viewers will benefit from the clarity of HD content on the company’s broadcast network, national cable channels and regional sports networks.

The migration to Motorola technology will be rolled out from the first quarter of next year. The transition to all-HD distribution will enable Fox to significantly streamline its distribution infrastructure as it moves from the current mix of SD and HD environments and diverse, multi-vendor technology platforms to a common all HD Motorola architecture.

The need for parallel SD storage and distribution will be eliminated since Motorola radios will support the real time conversion of the HD content to the SD format.

Fox Group president of engineering Andrew G. Setos says, “We realised some time ago that it was inevitable that all TV content was going to be produced and delivered in HD form. With this deployment, the Fox programming services have taken a major step in that direction.”

As part of the migration, Fox will provide its affiliates with Motorola’s DSR-6000 commercial digital satellite radio that include the capability to derive an SD version of the HD content transmitted by Fox.. The Motorola radios will read the standardized Active Format Descriptor information carried with the HD content that specifies the appropriate image composition for 3x4 aspect ratio SD TV sets.
Fox will be able to manage these radios using Motorola’s Broadcast Network Control System. This will give the company the ability to ‘health check’ both uplink and downlink paths, ensuring that all radios are online and functioning at maximum efficiency. In addition this will enable Fox to manage complex functions such as sports retunes, time zone selection, and restorals.

Fox will utilise Motorola’s SE-3000 high quality HD encoders to distribute its programming via satellite. Their functionality includes statistical multiplexing – to enable Fox to effectively combine individual HD streams into multiplexes operating with payloads as high as 73 Mb/s.

The DSR-6000 radio will convert the appropriate HD stream to the properly formatted SD signal as well as passing the HD signal as ASI or IP. Both the DSR-6000 and the SE-3000 will employ DVB-S2 modulation, enabling the efficient and robust delivery of high quality content via satellite.

Availability and choice in HD content continues to grow in importance to consumer audiences. In a recent study, Motorola found that the majority of Millennial generation users (young adults 16-27) with HDTV access “love” current HD programming, while 35 per cent are looking forward to having a broader selection of HD programming offered in the future.

(Source: Indiantelevision.com)