BEIJING -- CCBN 2004 Stand #2403 - Harmonic Inc. (Nasdaq: HLIT) today announced that Hefei Broadcast & TV Broad Band Network Ltd. (Hefei CATV) implemented a video-on-demand (VOD) service with Harmonic's industry leading Narrowcast Services Gateway(tm) (NSG). Hefei CATV's new service, the first cable-based VOD deployment utilizing IP-transport in China, represents a major step toward realizing the complete "digital vision" established by China's State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT).

Recently, SARFT articulated a comprehensive vision for converting China's current broadcast infrastructure to a secure digital format. With a broadband digital television platform, operators will be able to offer a wide range of world-class advanced services such as video-on-demand, network-based personal video recorders (nPVR) and high definition television.

Hefei CATV, which serves the capital of Anhui Province, has more than 300,000 subscribers in a market of approximately 1.5 million people. The local demographics combined with an existing digital cable network make it attractive for Hefei CATV to provision entertainment and educational programming on-demand. Harmonic's NSG-based VOD architecture, which leverages existing headend and HFC investments, makes a revenue-generating service technically and financially feasible. The NSG gives Hefei CATV an efficient and scalable way to transport and route VOD streams from the centralized server farm to the HFC network.

"This is the first implementation of cable video-on-demand on Hefei CATV's broadband digital television platform," said Mr. Wu Huairan, Chairman of the Board and General Manager. "After evaluating the various approaches and solutions, we concluded that Harmonic has better experience in digital television and video-on-demand in addition to consistently excellent customer support for China's broadcast and cable markets. The Narrowcast Services Gateway has many reference sites in the United States, as a result we are confident that using it would eliminate any deployment and operational risks. That is very important since our system will be a model for cable companies throughout China."

"Hefei CATV continues to demonstrate technical and service leadership as it pursues its 'digital vision'. As an early adopter of digital television, Hefei CATV has recognized that video-on-demand can both generate incremental revenue and provide a competitive advantage in an evolving broadband market," said Dr. Yaron Simler, President of Harmonic's Convergent Systems Division. "Hefei CATV's selection of Harmonic's Narrowcast Services Gateway reinforces the NSG's position as the leading platform for cable on-demand services around the world."

Now in its third-generation, the standards-based NSG family-composed of single rack-unit systems with 8, 12 and 16 output QAM channels-provides operators greater choice and flexibility in the design and expansion of their network infrastructure. By combining NSG units of varying QAM channel densities for each service group, cable operators can optimize their network architecture and bandwidth, reducing the effective cost of their infrastructure. The NSG is interoperable with all the leading providers of VOD servers, Ethernet switches, conditional access systems (for session-based encryption) and set-top boxes.

A complete video-on-demand solution based on the Narrowcast Services Gateway will be demonstrated at CCBN 2004 in the Harmonic stand (#2403).

In a separate release:

Harmonic Inc. (Nasdaq: HLIT) today announced an extension of its industry leading Broadcast Network Gateway (BNG) family of compact, multifunction edge devices to support SDH (DS-3) networks. The new BNG solution allows cable operators to more fully utilize their existing network investments thereby reducing the cost of introducing, managing and extending a secure multichannel digital television service.

The new Broadcast Network Gateway systems, which leverage Harmonic's pioneering work and leadership in broadcast and narrowcast EdgeQAM systems, are well suited to the needs of rapidly growing cable television markets such as China and India. The Harmonic solution incorporates key functionality that, while protecting an operator's substantial investment in SDH, allows local programming to be cost-effectively incorporated into the channel line-up as well as the sharing of services between operators.

"DS-3 is an extremely common telecom backbone network technology. Any architectural changes necessary to support emerging services-such as digital television-need to be evolutionary in nature. This was a key design consideration behind Harmonic's new Broadcast Network Gateway, which enables digital video services to be efficiently transported over SDH and then distributed over a QAM-based access network," said Buddy Snow, Vice President of Marketing for Harmonic's Convergent Systems Division. "Our new BNG solution embodies what the market has generally come to expect from

Harmonic: exceptional value, seamless integration, increased flexibility and greater scalability. With the BNG, we anticipate Harmonic will be able to increase its potential in countries with a large installed base of SDH networks. It also opens the door to further deployment of our award-winning Narrowcast Services Gateway, the platform of choice for content-on-demand service delivery."

The Broadcast Network Gateway solution for SDH environments is comprised of two cost-effective products. The BNG 6402, which typically resides at a main headend or contribution site, multiplexes/re-multiplexes MPEG-2 video streams and then prepares the transport stream for distribution over the DS-3 network. The BNG 6102 DS-3, located in a remote headend or hub, demarcates the SDH video backbone and the local HFC network. In addition to a seamless DS-3 to QAM interface, the system allows operators to concurrently provision a complete line-up of digital and analog video services as well as to economically incorporate locally produced programming. Through this approach, a local network operator can grow its headend infrastructure incrementally, in accordance with the needs of its market, while always providing a compelling suite of services.

The BNG solution is monitored and managed through a standalone browser-based tool. The web interface allows remote configuration and operation of the system, further reducing the operational costs.

Harmonic Inc.