Marunouchi Vision, the world's first area-based HDTV station, started broadcasting in September 2002 when the new Marunouchi Building opened. It has some 50 large-screen plasma displays at entrances and in shopping areas of Otemachi, Marunouchi, and Yurakucho buildings, owned by Mitsubishi Estate. From the broadcasting center in the Marunouchi Building, it broadcasts high-quality images in digital high-definition format by MPEG stream delivery. The “Marunouchi Card,” which made its debut at the same time, lets users earn points at the POS registers of 140 restaurants and shops at Marubiru. It also collects data that may be used for promotional and marketing activities.
Behind the infrastructure of Marubiru multimedia services is Hitachi Cable's network solution, which includes advanced Gigabit Ethernet technology. To deliver high-quality, high-definition images in real-time, as Marunouchi Vision does, reliable super broadband networks are needed. Gigabit Ethernet, which guarantees and secures sufficient bandwidth by QoS and has scalability, has been adopted to build the major part of the infrastructure of the new optical fiber network in Marunouchi. This has enabled Marunouchi Vision to transmit images stably by the 2 ch-40 Mbps multicast method. NTT Data Corporation initiated the project of building this high-speed network as a total system integrator. Under the supervision of NTT Data, Hitachi Cable supplies equipment and provides solution technology for the proposal, design, verification, and evaluation of the system. Hitachi Cable will continue to provide advanced network solutions that support the computerization of buildings and business districts, making full use of advanced Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet technologies. |
