TANDBERG Television announced that it has been selected to provide advanced video encoding and control systems to Malaysia's newest Pay TV platform. MiTV Corp Sdn Bhd (MiTV) is set to launch this summer with a full commercial roll out of a multi-channel IPTV service, with more than 50 live and on-demand channels planned.

MiTV has chosen the TANDBERG Television professional hardware encoding solution for Windows Media Video 9. As part of the contract TANDBERG Television will provide its EN5920 encoders and nCompass control and monitoring system to enable low bandwidth, broadcast quality video delivery over MiTV's IPTV network, which utilizes a combination of Internet Protocol and UHF transmission technologies and infrastructures. MiTV's IPTV offering includes a broad range of services, such as live TV channels, interactivity, video-on-demand, network PVR, music-on-demand and pay-per-view.

"With such a rich consumer offering, we are keen to manage our bandwidth utilization carefully while ensuring that the video services we provide to our consumers are second to none. To achieve this we need to deploy the best video encoding solutions available. We selected TANDBERG Television because of the company's lead position in the advanced encoding market and its ability to provide us with systems integration and local broadcast expertise," says Jonathan Chan, Chief Operating Officer of MiTV. "The TANDBERG EN5920 provides us with the ability to deliver broadcast quality TV at bit-rates at a saving of approximately 50% when compared to traditional compression methods."

The award-winning TANDBERG EN5920 supports the Windows Media Video 9 Advanced Profile codec, enabling IPTV operators to offer live, broadcast television programming at lower data rates while maintaining broadcast-quality pictures. It is based on the TANDBERG Intelligent Compression Engine (ICE), a powerful and sophisticated video and audio compression platform that provides a modular and upgradeable solution for high quality implementations of standard definition and high definition Windows Media Video 9 and MPEG-4 AVC technologies.

"MiTV is launching an exciting entertainment service for consumers in Malaysia and we are proud to have been selected to play such an important part in this milestone IPTV project. This contract further reinforces our leadership in advanced encoding and IP delivery systems and will take advantage of our rapidly expanding experience of deploying these advanced codecs in real systems around the world," says David Godfrey, Sales and Marketing Director of TANDBERG Television Asia Pacific.