IBC 2014 (4.A61h)
B1 TV, a privately held news and current affairs channel airing across Romania has selected Open Broadcast Encoder (OBE) for its upgrade from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4/AVC. Having run OBE as a backup encoder from January 2014, B1 decided in March 2014 to reverse the roles and use OBE for its main encoding solution.
There were two important reasons for our decision,” said Dan Lita, technical consultant for B1. “The first was the picture quality which was better than our previous encoder and secondly OBE resolved compatibility issues with set-top-boxes of a DTH provider. Prior to our main deployment, we had been using OBE for various contribution feeds since 2012.
OBE successfully passed compliance tests in the B1 laboratory and with partner IPTV and DTH carrier companies.
OBE is built around the x264 library. Not only is it an off the shelf hardware solution but a high quality encoder. In terms of picture quality it can easily compete with high-end commercial encoders. During our long test phase of the OBE Community Edition we received quick support from Open Broadcast Systems.
Said Dan.
It is a pleasure to have worked with B1 on this deployment. They have shown that OBE’s software-defined encoding platform can be used for mission-critical contribution and distribution deployments as well as provide a superior picture quality to traditional hardware encoders at a significantly lower-cost
said Kieran Kunhya, Managing Director of Open Broadcast Systems Ltd.
