DENVER—Luxembourg-based vendor SES said it has now signed up 35 pay TV companies for its end-to-end Ultra HD programming solution.
The company, which announced in May that Verizon has its solution in trials, announced new trial participants Jackson Energy Authority, a utilities and IPTV provider in Jackson, Tennessee; and Nittany Media, an innovative cable operator in Lewistown, Pennsylvania.
RELATED: Verizon becomes the latest pay-TV provider to team with SES for 4K delivery
SES also has trial agreements for its managed Ultra HD platform with Frontier Communications, Marquette-Adams in Wisconsin, Buckeye Broadband in Ohio and Southeast Michigan, Service Electric Cable TV in Pennsylvania and enTouch Systems in Texas.
SES said the first wave of trials kicked off last summer with Cable America in Missouri, Golden West Telecommunications in South Dakota, MTC Cable in New York and Sjoberg’s Cable TV in Minnesota.
These trials deliver 4K to customers either through managed IP multicast DOCSIS 3.0 streams (versus over-the-top internet connections) or traditional digital QAM transport streams.
Three of SES’ operator clients have already graduated past the trial phase and are into commercial deployments.
“We’re really focused on the smaller tiers, because they’re the ones who have the biggest challenges in terms of new technology,” said Steve Corda, VP of business development for SES.
SES solution includes everything from partnering with 4K programming providers to handling transcoding to facilitating delivery of programming to the operator’s headend.
“The cost of 4K transcoding alone is huge,” Corda said. “A smaller operator could never do that.”
As for programming, SES delivers 10 channels themed around extreme sports, travel, fashion, nature, NASA and other topics.