Harmonic Sees More Media Companies Using HEVC for HD, Even SD Content, CEO Says

Video technology supplier Harmonic saw “increased Ultra HD and HEVC compression activity breaking loose” in Q2, CEO Patrick Harshman said on a Monday earnings call. During the quarter, Harmonic “passed our key milestone” by shipping the industry's first Ultra HD encoders with high dynamic range, “enabling the significantly wider color range and enhanced luminance levels that many of our customers now believe is vital to the commercial success of Ultra HD,” Harshman said. Bolstering Ultra HD adoption are growing TV sales and consumer interest, “a gradually maturing ecosystem, new test channel launches and continuous innovation in video quality and bandwidth efficiencies,” he said. There’s also “growing market interest” in HEVC compression, he said: “Many of the world's leading media and telecom companies are now actively considering leveraging HEVC to recompress existing services to dramatically expand reach and reduce distribution costs.” Harshman thinks it’s “an interesting dynamic” that more and more broadcast and media companies are “looking to use HEVC in the near term for traditional HD and even SD content as they look to drive better efficiencies in their mobile networks in their streaming infrastructure,” he said in Q&A. “We've had a couple of announced customers using HEVC technology for those services, and so we do have a view now that HEVC will be more of a near term driver even before Ultra HD really kicks out,” he said.