Ericsson's Voyager II digital satellite news gathering solution has been deployed at Qinghai TV, a Mandarin language broadcaster in the Qinghai province that reaches five million consumers in Qinghai and Chongqing TV, which has over 4 million cable subscribers across the 40 counties of Chongqing in southwest China.
"We chose the Voyager II solution to support our live event broadcasting because it offers us the best return on our investment," said Zhao Ping, Director of Technical Center, Qinghai TV. "It gives us a great deal of flexibility both in presentation and delivery, while at the same time allowing us to make efficient use of bandwidth."
Ericsson's Voyager II offers MPEG-4 AVC 4:2:2 encoding with 10-bit precision and hardware support for resolutions up to 1080p at 50 or 60 frames per second.
The solution's ability to handle live HD experience and its capacity to meet the future demands of 3D television were also factors in the decision to deploy Voyager II.
"In such a fast moving market, it's important for broadcasters to be able to deliver the TV experience that consumers demand, not only today but also in the future as the market evolves and moves towards all HD TV," said Mats Olsson, head of China and North East Asia at Ericsson, in a statement. "As the Asian television market continues to grow the consumer demand for quality live TV also increases. More than ever, viewers now expect occasions such as large sports events to be available in HD and potentially 3D in the future. The Voyager II DSNG has been specifically designed to allow broadcasters to meet those challenges for years to come."
Olsson also noted that China is one of the fastest growing and most important digital TV markets in the world. "According to analyst firm Informa, by 2016 China will account for more than half of the Asia Pacific region's digital homes," he added.
