SAPEC (SA de Productos Electrónicos y de Comunicación), was founded in the year 1976 as a company engaged in the manufacture and installation of devices for the broadcasting and reception of the Piped Music service commercialised by Telefónica.

In the 90s, it started its R&D activities developing its own products of audio compression, and installation and commissioning of devices for contribution links of television signals.

From the year 2000, through heavy investments in R&D, it started its experience in the world of video compression (MPEG2, MPEG4/AVC, HEVC) for Television professional environments.

Nowadays, Sapec is the only Spanish company with extensive experience in the world of “video contribution” in professional environments with internally-designed products and competing with industry giants.

Along the history of Sapec there have been many important milestones, to name a few:

• Launching of SIVAC. Family of MPEG-2 (profile 422) encoders/decoders for SD developed by Sapec and certified by the Telefónica labs in the year 2004.
• Launching of ALTUM. Family of H.264/AVC (profile 422) Encoders/decoders for HD developed by Sapec and certified by Telefonica and the EBU in the year 2008.

UHD transmission tests, conducted during 2013 together with Abertis, Hispasat, RTVE, Sony and other collaborating companies, where Sapec contributed its technology to encode UHD contents in MPEG4/AVC and the new HEVC coding standard.