Polish cable and Internet-protocol-TV operator Multimedia Polska deployed hardware and software from Harmonic to support its new video-on-demand service.
The deal is one of several new sales for Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Harmonic in the international IPTV market. Multimedia Polska, which has more than 600,000 subscribers, first launched VOD last September in six cities and plans to roll it out to its entire digital-cable subscriber base by the end of 2008.
The company, which was an existing customer of Harmonic's optical-transmission gear, is using Harmonic's StreamLiner video servers and Armada intelligent asset manager to dynamically distribute VOD content based on popularity and available resources. Multimedia Polska’s VOD network is a distributed system with some 20 regional sites across the country linked via IP-based connectivity.
"Harmonic was uniquely able to support the needs of our hybrid network architecture simultaneously servicing cable subscribers via the HFC [hybrid fiber-coaxial] network and IPTV subscribers via the DSL [digital subscriber line] network," said Bartlomiej Kasinski, VOD project manager for Multimedia Polska, in a statement. "The StreamLiner servers are scalable and easy to manage, and we are impressed with the ability of the Armada software to dynamically manage the movement of content based upon regional popularity over our wide-area network."
