Imagine Communications has released a next-generation platform for its ICE Video Processor. The platform, which will start shipping in early Q3, allows up to eight HD channels, or 32 SD channels, per RU.

Service providers can now deliver video with efficient bandwidth, rack space and power utilization and can use the same platform for multiple applications.

The ICE Video Platform comprises a suite of solutions for digital broadcast and PersonalizedTV services, such as VOD, nPVR, IPTV and Internet video.

“Our initial product, the ICE Broadcast System, offers the industry’s best video quality and most efficient multiplexing of HDTV and SDTV digital broadcast channels, and is the quickest and most cost-effective way for cable operators to achieve 100-plus linear HDTV signals at excellent video quality,” said Lorenzo Bombelli, Imagine’s VP of product strategy and management. “By unifying broadcast and PersonalizedTV applications on our next-generation platform, system operators benefit from reduced operational complexity and increased service velocity.”

And Imagine’s Interchangeable Compressed Elements (ICE) Broadcast System is now being used to deliver more than 200 digital TV signals to dozens of cable operators serving more than 6 million subscribers.

The company said that this is the industry’s first major digital deployment leveraging managed video quality, a capability – enabled by Imagine’s technology – that allows service providers to establish, maintain and monitor video quality performance.

Additionally, the ICE Broadcast System offers bandwidth efficiency, giving operators efficient multiplexing of HDTV and SDTV signals; cost effectiveness, with the least-disruptive solution for expanding HD capacity without degrading quality; and high reliability, with standards-based hardware and software components, as well as high-availability clustering and robust redundancy schemes.

According to Imagine, it’s the quickest and most cost-effective way for cable operators to achieve 100-plus linear HDTV signals at high video quality.