Designed to address the increasing demand for advanced video and audio services Harmonic’s ProStream™ 1000 with Mentor™ re-encoding technology is the world’s first dense MPEG-2 re-encoding platform, including 32 MPEG-2 SD VBR decoders and 32 MPEG-2 SD CBR encoders. The Mentor technology is ideal for operators in multiple applications:

• Delivering multiple switched broadcast services through the existing cable VOD infrastructure by converting VBR services to CBR with video quality superior to legacy rate-shaping technologies
• Delivering second generation on-demand services such as Network PVR by re-encoding existing VBR services to CBR as well as managing GOP structures for simpler ingest into the video server infrastructure.

The Mentor re-encoding technology enables VBR-to-CBR or CBR-to-CBR bit rate adjustments as well format changes to pre-encoded MPEG-2 video streams while maintaining high video quality. Sharing the same technology as Harmonic’s award-winning DiviCom® encoder line, the Mentor re-encoding technology leverages the knowledge and experience gained from several generations of encoders.