The equipment behind SureWest's high definition over IPTV rollout

By Richard Lawler

As we mentioned earlier, SureWest is rolling out HDTV on their FTTH
network in the Sacramento area, over the last couple of days we've gotten more information just how they are doing it.

Surprisingly, it looks like they are using MPEG-2 instead of the newer MPEG-4 codec, since the Amino set top boxes
they are using are only capable of decoding MPEG-2. The AmiNET120 is the same size as SureWest customers' current SD AmiNET110, but SureWest is pushing a fat pipe to their customers for all that content. Those boxes are tiny though. They also have an MPEG-4 (and h.264 and AVC) compatible box, it will be interesting to see if SureWest switches to that in the future.

To get that content out to their consumers, SureWest is relying on BigBand Networks' BMR (Broadband Multimedia Service Router).
That box takes in the multiple satellite feeds and outputs HD and SD
programming. Not quite as sexy as the AmiNET box, but you don't have to be pretty to encode my HD, didn't Prince say that?

 

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