RENNES, France -- DISH HD Asia, one of Asia's leading DTH satellite pay-TV services, has selected the award-winning ViBE® VS7000 HEVC encoder from Thomson Video Networks to drive its new Ultra HD 4K and all-HEVC-HD satellite service upgrade for delivery of more than 120 channels to viewers throughout Northeast Asia. Powered by Thomson Video Networks' MediaFlexOS operating system, ViBE VS7000 — combined with the NetProcessor 9030 multiplexer/scrambler, MediaFlexSUITE, and FUZE-1 4K playout system, this major system upgrade will deliver significant video quality improvements, as well as cost- and bandwidth-saving HEVC compression for the DISH HD platform.

"DISH HD was the pioneer of HD satellite pay-TV services in Asia," said Bert Klein, managing director, DISH HD. Now, with this major system upgrade, we have again demonstrated our leadership in bringing the best satellite TV experience to our subscribers. They can now enjoy Ultra HD 4K and HEVC HD channels, and we have doubled our channel capacity and introduced a new Ultra HD 4K HEVC set-top box. Thomson Video Networks was our partner of choice. Not only did Thomson provide superior technology, but they met our required schedules and project timeline while providing strong support to ensure our delivery was on schedule."

"With this major system upgrade, we have moved away from MPEG-4 and are now a fully HEVC satellite DTH network, enjoying significant bandwidth efficiencies and savings through Thomson Video Networks' ViBE VS7000," said Wai Hoong Tham, director of networks and broadcast for DISH HD. "More importantly, as a satellite service, we saw that we could only meet our requirements for 1080i and statistical multiplexing with the VS7000, which has allowed us to deliver new channels to our subscribers. It was clear that Thomson Video Networks could deliver not only the best HEVC picture quality and highest channel density, but also the optimized satellite capacity and reduced OPEX we needed for a profitable and high-quality offering. Moreover, with its MediaFlexOS framework and unique FUZE-1 playout system, Thomson Video Networks offers a future-proof solution for advanced applications, such as ad insertion."

Thomson Video Networks' partner, Ideal Systems HK, provided systems integration and installation for the DISH HD service, which leverages powerful new HEVC features built into the latest version of the ViBE VS7000. These include an interlaced mode and statistical multiplexing for variable bit-rate encoding to enable increased compression performance for delivering 1080i video content.

Thomson Video Networks