Information Communications Technology (ICT) is integrating virtually every consumer service into one platform, offering users voice, data, entertainment, and commerce tools on a single device by seamlessly connecting all these functions together. Telecommunication and media companies are entering into agreements to provide these services for their customers with greater frequency to ensure they don't get left behind. ZON Multimedia (News - Alert), Portugal's pay-TV operator and content provider, has chosen to power the set of DVB-S and DVB-C transport streams to provide pay TV services using Envivio's (News - Alert) software-based headend solutions.

With more than 1.5 million subscribers in Portugal, ZON is looking to ensure these customers remain with the company by ensuring they will be able to access the company's content across any device, any time, and anywhere.

Using an official Portuguese representative, Satcab, Envivio will supply the Envivio Muse encoders on the Envivio 4Caster G4 Intel (News - Alert)-based appliance, with Envivio Spark receivers and multiplexers to deliver high quality video in variable bitrate (VBR) format for cable and satellite broadcast TV channels.

The Envivio network management system manages and controls the headend infrastructure, while the Muse encoder produces constant bitrate (CBR) video for delivering multi-screen services for non-linear TV and adaptive bit-rate (ABR) services.

"The Envivio Muse encoders offer excellent video quality for statistical multiplexing of our DVB-S and DVB-C broadcast channels, while also simultaneously creating outputs for the various mobile resolutions we require," said Jose Pascoal, planning and engineering director at ZON Multimedia.

The Muse platform provides live or on-demand video encoding and transcoding, providing best-in-class video quality for all codecs on all screens – HEVC (H.265), AVC (H.264) and MPEG-2 – using the company's propriety video algorithm running on Intel-based server appliances or blade servers from HP, Cisco or IBM (News - Alert) in a datacenter/cloud environment.

"Our software is designed to support everything from the highest quality HDTV to low resolution video for smartphones, delivered from a single converged solution. Operators using our converged solutions realize significant reductions in costs and gains in flexibility," said Julien Signes (News - Alert), Envivio's president and CEO.

The TV Everywhere solution provides:

• A single headend for broadcast and multi-screen delivery to any screen and network
• Reception from Satellite, Cable, Terrestrial or uncompressed sources with Envivio Spark
• Encoding/Transcoding to any codec, format and resolution thanks to Envivio Muse Live
• Encryption, Multiplexing and Modulation for broadcast applications with Envivio Spark
• Encryption, packaging and origin distribution with Envivio Halo
• Creation of Catch-up TV assets from live programs
• Control, management, monitoring and redundancy of the complete head-end with Envivio 4Manager
• Built-in interface for content protection, ad management systems, program recording

Envivio supplies 300 content and service providers around the world with multi-screen video processing and delivery including to eight of the top 10 mobile operators, nine of the top 10 broadband providers and three of the top four U.S. cable operators.