TANDBERG Television announced that PCCW's now Broadband TV has chosen its market-leading advanced compression solutions for a world-first roll-out of HD over DSL. The deal expands on the two companies' existing relationship and will make now TV Asia's first advanced encoding HD operator, as it deploys the awarding-winning TANDBERG HD encoding solution for MPEG-4 AVC.

The now Pay-TV service launched in 2003 and has been using TANDBERG Television MPEG-2 encoding for its premium channels. The rapid growth of now TV's subscriber base was confirmed again today when the company announced that it had exceeded half a million customers, making it the largest IPTV platform in the world. The new HD service will be a welcome extension which will enable PCCW to retain its lead in the highly competitive Hong Kong television market. With the TANDBERG EN5990 MPEG-4 AVC encoder now TV will be able to deliver a compelling HD service with sport, entertainment and news content in half the bandwidth that would have been required for the same picture quality with MPEG-2.

"Our focus is on delivering the best quality premium TV service possible, and TANDBERG Television's world-leading compression has enabled us to achieve that," says Paul Berriman, Head of Strategic Market Development at PCCW. "We have grown a successful standard definition business with TANDBERG Television's IP video head-end and are now excited to be the first operator in Asia to offer HDTV based on the MPEG-4 AVC platform. It is thanks to TANDBERG Television's vision and drive to provide the market with MPEG-4 AVC HD solutions today that we are able to achieve our HD ambitions in 2005."

TANDBERG Television's MPEG-4 AVC HD systems are already established as a proven success, with broadcasters and operators including DIRECTV, BSkyB, JSAT and Premiere basing their HD services and trials on the encoding engine. Moreover, TANDBERG Television's world-first IPTV deployment shows that broadband TV operators can now enjoy the bandwidth-reducing benefits of MPEG-4 AVC while retaining the high picture quality of MPEG-2.

"Our MPEG-4 AVC HD systems are first-to-market and have proven to be as effective over DSL as they are over satellite," says Graham Cradock, VP and General Manager of TANDBERG Television Asia Pacific. "To be part of the pioneering move to HD in Asia and at the same time achieve a world-first by leading the way in enabling HD over DSL is thrilling for us. We look forward to continuing our partnership with PCCW, and to further exploring the potential of our broadband HD solutions."