Russian Satellite Uses Harmonic

MOSCOW -- Harmonic Inc. (NASDAQ: HLIT) today announced that NTV-Plus, the leading direct-to-home (DTH) satellite service provider in Russia and the Ukraine with more than 550,000 subscribers, has deployed Harmonic's industry-leading DiviCom® Electra™ 7000 high definition (HD) MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) encoders for its new HD service. Since its introduction in July 2006, more than twenty operators in the United States and around the world have selected the Electra 7000 to power their new HD services. NTV-Plus has also implemented Harmonic's Electra 1000 standard definition (SD) MPEG-2 encoders and DiviTrackIP™ distributed statistical multiplexing to more efficiently compress and deliver locally encoded and remultiplexed SD video programming.

Harmonic's compression expertise and superior video processing, combined with the efficiency gains made possible with MPEG-4 technology, are creating new possibilities for satellite operators such as NTV-Plus.

"Being first to market in Russia with a high quality HD service was a key objective for NTV-Plus," said Dmitry Samokhin, CEO of NTV-Plus. "At the moment we are broadcasting test versions of three HD channels and we are going to make them available to subscribers in late March. Harmonic's IP-based solution met our criteria for the best video quality while also providing more flexibility, tremendous space efficiency and ease of management. With the Harmonic solution, we can improve customer satisfaction as well as add new revenue-generating services."

Harmonic Inc. (Nasdaq: HLIT)