The Ateme MPEG-4-Part 10 H.264 HD encoder was used by French broadcast operator Free to encode HD video of the French Open to transmit over ADSL to its Freebox subscribers.

Available in the UK from Kane Computing, the Ateme MPEG-4-Part 10 H.264 HD encoder was used by French broadcast operator Free to encode HD video of the French Open to transmit over ADSL to its Freebox subscribers. The performance and efficiency of the Ateme encoder enabled Free to transmit commercial HD broadcasts at never before achieved bitrates of 5.2Mbit/s. The average bitrate for solutions offered by the leading players in the market is 13Mbit/s.

More than 12,000 households tuned in to this service, making the Freebox the most widely used range of high definition decoders in France.

Mark Guillaumet, Technology Licensing Business Manager at Ateme said he was very proud that the Ateme technology won out for quality and bit rate in a direct trial with other leading HD H.264 encoder providers.

Richard White, Managing Director of Kane Computing confirmed that this was also true in the UK, with the Ateme offline PC H.264 encoder having been selected after thorough evaluation and testing by a number of major UK players in IP-TV content generation.

As well as PC based HD H.264 video compression, Ateme also sell a 'best-of-breed' high definition Main Profile and High Profile broadcast quality real-time encoder optimised to run on four devices, a mixed architecture of FPGAs and a DSP resulting in a compact 3 x 3in board format for increased HD channel density.