SES today announced that two US pay TV operators have launched commercial linear Ultra HD services to cable and IPTV subscriber homes.
Marquette-Adams of Oxford, Wisconsin and Highlands Cable Group of Highlands, North Carolina have licensed Ultra HD programming through Vivicast Media and launched Ultra HD offerings following successful trials of SES’s satellite-delivered UHD solution.
SES said that additional cable and IPTV operators are also now close to launching their own Ultra HD services using SES’s Ultra HD solution, with more than 20 TV operators now testing it.
Programming on the SES Ultra HD lineup features ten 4K Ultra HD channels – Fashion One 4K, Travelxp 4K, 4KUniverse, NASA TV UHD, Insight TV, UHD1, C4K360, Funbox 4K, Nature Relaxation 4K and SES’s UHD demonstration channel.
These channels are hosted on a trio of SES satellites, while Vivicast secured licensing rights for the pay TV providers offering the 4K Ultra HD programming line-up provided by SES.
“We have delivered on our bold plan announced at NAB two years ago, which was laser-focused on enabling linear Ultra HD home delivery in half the time it took HD to reach the same television milestone in the US,” said Steve Corda, vice president of business development in North America for SES.
“SES cut through the operational and technical barriers with our scalable solution delivered via satellite, which provides high quality Ultra HD and can reach over 100 million television households throughout North America.”
