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DVB-to-IP Blade
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Overview
Minerva's high performance architecture
and commitment to open standards ensure that you are building
your network solution on a solid foundation.
Chassis
The
Minerva VC8000 Chassis is a compact 4RU 19" rack
mount enclosure. The front side of the chassis is a CompactPCI
13-slot backplane and houses different types of application
modules, or "blades". Each element of the system
is designed for redundancy and is hot-swappable.
Key components include:
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CompactPCI
13-slot backplane |
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Up
to three hot-swappable 175 watt, redundant power-supplies |
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Three
hot-swappable, redundant blowers in individual canisters |
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One
single board computer (SBC) with 2 Ethernet ports |
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Up
to ten hot-swappable blades. |
Encoder Blade
Minerva®
Video Concentrator 8000 (VC8000) is a chassis-based carrier-class
video processing platform optimized for IP Television
headends. The VC8000 combines MPEG encoding and DVB content
conversion into a modular, high-density chassis. A single
VC8000 can encode up to 10 analog channels or perform
the digital turnaround of up to 20 transponders through
individual hot-swappable blades.
Compression chips from LSI Logic combined with Minerva's
expertise in video pre-processing allow the VC8000 to
achieve superior video quality at less than 3 Mbps, enabling
the delivery of high quality television services to two
television sets over a single ADSL line.
The
VC8000 comes standard with redundant fans and power supplies.
An integrated HTTP server and SNMP support make the VC8000
easy to control and manage.
Learn
more about the Chassis,
Encoder and DVB-to-IP
Blades, and Pre-Processing
Module.
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Minerva's
5th generation encoder, the VC8000 encoder blade is
the culmination of 10 years' experience and intellectual
property. Minerva's first encoder the Compressionist,
shipped in 1995, and was considered the Cadillac of
the industry capturing more than 80% of the market.
Since that time, Minerva has developed a variety of
encoding systems for DVD production, distance learning,
surveillance and IP Television.
This experience and engineering expertise was used
to create a world-class encoder for the VC8000 that
is optimized for building IP Television Headends.
We again utilized the number-one video compression
chip in the industry from LSI Logic to ensure the
best video quality, along with the VxWorks operating
system to obtain the highest levels of reliability.
Minerva
has also developed a pre-compression video processing
option for the encoder blade. This option is typically
used in ADSL networks for those particularly difficult
channels that require more horsepower.
The
encoder blade supports
MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 compression and decompression in
NTSC and PAL formats at data rates from 1 to 15 Mbps.
The MPEG-2 transport streams can be delivered over
a broadband IP network to a variety of devices including
set-top boxes, video servers and PC client players.
The VC8000 encoder user interface is extremely intuitive
offering more video controls and functions specific
to the needs of IP Television operators.
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Key
features include: |
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Two
input formats: S-video and analog composite |
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MPEG
1 and MPEG 2 data compression rates from 1 Mbps
to 15 Mbps |
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Full,
3/4, 2/3 or half-D1 resolution: [720, 544, 480,
352 x 480/576] |
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Advanced
video filter controls |
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Optional
pre-processing module (field upgradeable
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The
Minerva VC8000 DVB-to-IP application module ("blade")
converts DVB-ASI video feeds into IP streams.
DVB-ASI feeds are demultiplexed and remultiplexed
into single-program MPEG-2 transport streams.
The MPEG-2 transport streams can be delivered
over a broadband IP network to a variety of devices
including set-top boxes, video servers and PC
client players. Each VC8000 DVB-to-IP blade features
two DVB-ASI inputs, each handling up to 30 channels.
Therefore, each blade supports up to 60 input
channels (up to 140 Mbps) and 60 output streams
(up to 120 Mbps).
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blade features: |
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Two
input scan modes: auto and manual |
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Up
to 10 output streams from each input channel |
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Up
to 16 Program Identifications (PIDs) per stream |
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Unicast
and multicast support |
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Either
manual or automatic (scheduled) start |
Minerva
VLSM-1 Pre-Processor - MPEG-2 Video Compression
Optimization
The
main objective of the VLSM-1 pre-processor is to
optimize the efficiency of MPEG-2 encoding by providing
maximum MPEG-2 compressed picture quality for a
given bit rate or maximum compression for a specified
picture quality The pre-processor implements PerceptiView™,
VLSCom's breakthrough, patented technology. PerceptiView™
is a visual lossless picture coding based on picture
data analysis. It defines the visual perception
threshold for each detail in the picture, reacting
accordingly. For each detail, the pre-processor
automatically applies the appropriate adaptive filters
prior to MPEG-2 video compression. The adjustable
filters include spatio-temporal and light detail,
picture complexity and signal noise level.
Minerva
VLSM-1 Pre-Processor
Board Top
The
adaptive pre-processing takes into account the video
source, compressed picture space resolution, bit
rate and MPEG-2 compression algorithm including
the motion compensation and differential pulse code
modulation (MC/DPCM).
The Minerva VLSM-1 compression optimization is based
on picture visual lossless perceptual redundancy
reduction, accomplished by the following automatic
adaptive operations:
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Impulse
and fluctuation (additive and multiplicative)
noise reduction |
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Motion
compensated picture structural temporal |
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Picture
structural spatial filtering |
The
non-invariant adaptive filters are based on noise
level estimation, and the spatial and temporal picture
complexity. The filters can be matched with varying
MPEG-2 compression parameters because of their adaptive
capabilities. This results in higher pre-processing
efficiency than traditinal MPEG-2 pre-processing
filters
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