HDTV ad insertion becomes a reality

Susan Rush
From the October 23th edition of CED Broadband Direct

Cable operators eye opening digital channels to local advertisers as a source of revenue. Terayon Communication Systems Inc. has teamed with nCUBE Corp. to now include high-definition television in the mix.

The companies have developed an HD ad insertion system built on Terayon's DM 6400 Network CherryPicker and nCUBE's DPI Premium System. nCUBE's DPI system stores the ads in a digital format and delivers them to the CherryPicker on cue. The CherryPicker then synchronizes the bit rate of the ad with the bit rate of the program and then splices the ad into the program.

The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers has developed Digital Program Insertion (DPI) standards to facilitate digital ad insertion.

"The need for HD ad insertion solutions in growing as cable operators continue their preparations to widely offer HDTV," said Mark Jeffrey, senior product line manager for Terayon's Digital Video Solutions. "Fortunately, the work we have done with nCUBE shows that the SCTE's DPI standards, which were originally developed for SD digital ad insertion, can work for HD as well," he said.

The HD ad insertion system has not yet made its market debut. The companies have been testing the system and say the while operating for five consecutive days, it inserted frame-accurate HD ad every two minutes into an HDTV stream. No errors were reported, according to the companies. The companies plan to demonstrate their HD ad insertion system at upcoming cable shows.