Tektronix Enhances Sentry Digital Content Monitor

posted:

22/07/2011

Sentry Now Supports SCTE 168-6 Programme Availability and Closed Captioning Reporting

Tektronix, the leading provider of digital content monitoring systems, has added significant new reporting capabilities to its award-winning Sentry® digital content monitor, used by leading video service providers to improve the quality of their video services through quick identification, diagnosis and repair of video and audio errors that degrade viewers’ quality of experience (QoE).

"Keeping our industry-leading Sentry on the cutting-edge is an ongoing priority for us and these new reporting features are the latest examples of our commitment to ensure that Sentry meets the needs of video service providers today and tomorrow," said Eben Jenkins, general manager, Video Product Line, Tektronix.

Integrating Video/Audio QoE with SCTE 168-6 Programme Availability Reporting

The first new reporting capability integrates Sentry’s ground-breaking Video and Audio QoE Scoring System – the industry’s first system to gauge the actual severity of video and audio impairments for subscribers – with the SCTE 168-6 ‘Recommended Practice for Monitoring Multimedia Distribution Quality,’ a popular method for reporting programme availability. Integrating SCTE 168-6 support with Sentry’s ability to detect video and audio errors that are not always caused by dropped packets (such as video freeze, black screen, tiling, macroblocking, compression artifacts, loss of audio channel or audio quality issues) enables video service providers to take advantage of a popular reporting methodology while identifying and fixing those problems that have a real impact on viewing quality.

This new integrated report provides a powerful management dashboard for both service providers and their customers (especially when combined with Sentry’s 60 day performance reporting capability). With Sentry, business-to-business reporting and compliance with service level agreements become easy to manage.

Closed Captioning

The second new capability enables video service providers to verify that Closed Captioning content has been included with the programme being delivered - a regulatory requirement for U.S. and Canadian cable operators. Sentry generates Closed Captioning status reports, which video service providers can use with programmers, satellite network operators and operations staff to determine where the fault lies when closed captioning data is missing.

The new capabilities for Programme Availability reporting and Closed Captioning monitoring are both available in release 5.1 of the Sentry operating software, which is currently available at no cost to existing customers with maintenance agreements.

About the Sentry Monitoring Solution

Sentry is an award-winning, comprehensive content monitoring solution for cable, telecom, IPTV and other video service providers. Capable of monitoring hundreds of video streams simultaneously, Sentry enables the early detection, diagnosis and repair of video and audio errors (such as video freeze, macro-blocking, loss of audio, etc.) whenever or wherever they occur in the network. This means that service providers can deliver services with excellent quality, thus ensuring optimal quality of experience (QoE) for viewers. Sentry accomplishes this through an unprecedented visibility into network anomalies at the IP and MPEG layers, combined with the scalability to monitor every programme in the network, 60-day historical database, a programme-centric user-interface, and its real-time, 24/7 operation.