Harmonic has announced that its Electra 8000 multi-channel universal encoder is helping Brazil based HD Pay-TV service provider SKY Brasil expand its HDTV service.

The Electra 8000 is claimed to be the world' s first 1-RU encoder with multi-resolution, multi-standard, multi-service and multi-channel capabilities. The high performance Electra 8000 significantly enhances bandwidth efficiency and provides up to four standard-definition or high-definition channels of superior quality constant bit-rate or variable bit-rate video using either MPEG-2 or AVC encoding.

SKY Brasil had launched its HDTV service last year using Harmonic' (News - Alert) s MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) digital video delivery solutions, including the Electra 7000 encoder, ProStream 1000 stream processing platform with DiviTrackIP statistical multiplexing, and NMX Digital Service Manager. SKY Brasil will now get to enjoy additional bandwidth efficiency and offer expanded HD service with the deployment of Electra 8000.

Using Electra 8000's architecture and feature set SKY Brasil could ease the operational requirements of density and power efficiency, and facilitate the launch of new value-added video services. Leapfrogging current best-in-class MPEG-2 and AVC compression platforms, the Electra 8000 allows for deployment of new services such as HD, and increases ROI on existing bandwidth.

The flexible hardware platform can easily be reconfigured with a firmware upgrade, for new applications such as migrating from SD to HD AVC, according to the company.

"We continue to choose Harmonic to improve and power our SKY HDTV offerings simply because the company continues to provide the highest quality, most cost-effective, and feature-rich HD video solutions in the industry,"  said Luis Otavio Marchezetti, Director of Engineering for SKY Brasil. " Harmonic's Electra 8000 compression platform solution offers excellent video quality and greater bandwidth efficiency for our new HD services."

Richard Phelps, vice president of sales for the Caribbean and Latin America markets at Harmonic added that the Electra 8000 and the other Harmonic MPEG-4 encoding, stream processing and network management systems deployed by SKY Brasil provide a reliable, comprehensive solution to power SKY's growing HD service.