Pixel Power, the global leader in graphics production and playout automation, has appointed Sarah Deas to its head office team. Deas will provide internal sales support to the sales teams in the Cambridge base and regional offices in North America, South-East Asia and the Middle East.

EcoDigital announced today its largest DIVA version release — DIVA V8. DIVA content storage management (CSM) is the market's leading and most trusted brand. DIVA V8 is the result of EcoDigital's client feedback along with focus and investment in realizing the market need. Leveraging a brand new user experience platform, DIVA V8 provides new reporting plus analytical and operational capabilities to help manage complex rich media ecosystems, allowing customers to gain full control of the entire life cycle of their digital content.

DIVA puts the power of customers' digital content back into their own hands. It optimizes costs and simplifies management of even the most complex environments. Agnostic to data storage technologies, solutions are easily scalable from single-server disk-only architectures to larger systems that combine different storage tiers and technologies, all with infinite capacities. The combination of different storage technologies and content migration processes enables customers to balance response time, performance, and cost, and allows the environment to scale as needs increase.

LiveU is proud to assist NASA TV with transmitting live video of the journey of NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley on the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, lifting off on a Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center on May 27th. The historic event marks the first time US Astronauts travel to the International Space Station from US soil in nearly nine years. The NASA TV crew will use a LiveU LU600 4K HEVC field unit to document the astronauts’ trip from the holding area to the rocket ship launch pad and subsequent launch. LiveU Matrix, the company’s IP content management and distribution solution, will power the worldwide distribution of multiple positioned pool cameras – provided by the Central Florida Media Committee – to cover the milestone launch.

Anevia announces the addition of multi-tiered storage to its Cloud DVR storage offering, Embedded Distributed Storage (EDS). This new feature makes EDS even more cost-efficient and scalable while also enabling storage in the cloud – meaning the solution becomes both flexible and elastic.

TV service providers are increasingly enriching their VOD content and need to expand their storage capacity without a commensurate increase in the number of users. The original hyper-convergent design of the scalable, high-performance EDS calls for more servers to be added to increase streaming and storage capacity in parallel. Multi-tiered storage means it is now possible to also increase storage capacity independently of streaming capacity.

With only a small fraction of the VOD catalogue being consumed regularly, long-tail content can be stored more efficiently and cost-effectively on general-purpose ‘cold storage’ support used by the IT departments. This eliminates the need to buy new servers and the related software licences, cutting both the complexity and the cost of scaling for a given number of users.

The newly introduced feature also enables object storage, which opens up the possibility of storing in the public or private cloud. This brings the advantages of scalability, flexibility and elasticity.

SES announced today that the number of global TV households it reaches directly or indirectly via satellite increased by 12 million to 367 million in 2019. Findings from the company's annual Satellite Monitor market research validate, once again, SES's position as the world's leading video content distributor via satellite and shows the important role that satellite continues to play in reaching the largest possible audience globally.

Much of the increase in the 12 million TV households is attributed to the leading infrastructure of TV reception — satellite and cable — which grew by 9 million in 2019 to 153 million and 149 million homes, respectively. Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) and terrestrial TV grew by a combined 3 million to 43 million and 21 million homes.

The Satellite Monitor study also showed that SES's technical reach has increased across several continents, including Europe, Africa, Asia-Pacific (APAC), and Latin America (LATAM). Europe continues to be the strongest market for SES, with 168 million total households served by the SES fleet, up by 1 million from 2018, followed by North America at 69 million.

AVer Europe has today announced the integration of its pan-tilt-zoom cameras with world leading video standard NDI® capability to deliver enhanced Pro AV opportunities to the UK market.

The new PTZ310N and PTZ330N models feature NewTek’s NDI® video standard integration that enables the cameras to communicate, deliver and receive high quality content with low latency, which is also frame-accurate and suitable for switching in a live production environment.

The NDI® standard enables seamless interaction between various control systems and AVer Europe’s camera hardware for capturing and livestreaming. Users can create robust IP workflows throughout all components of their production setup via one cable rather than having to wire every video or audio source directly into an SDI router, saving significant time and money through increased efficiency.

This new functionality combined with the powerful zoom, smooth movement and high-quality imaging offered by AVer Europe’s PTZ cameras, enables higher education institutions to capture classroom lectures and broadcast events such as Ted Talks or graduation ceremonies. The cameras also facilitate coverage of major awards, press conferences and tradeshows in business.

“This upgrade for the PTZ310N and PTZ330N enables users to access a new range of event capturing and livestreaming capabilities within both education and business,” explains Rene Buhay, AVer Europe Vice President of Sales & Marketing. “By integrating NDI HX2 with our existing advanced features in our PTZ range, we are improving Pro AV processes for content producers globally.”

Germany-based broadcaster ProSiebenSat.1 has chosen Globecast, the global solutions provider for media, for the licensing of its ProSiebenSat.1 Welt German-language TV channel exclusively in the US for MVPD, cable operator, OTT platform and IPTV distribution and non-exclusively in Central and South America, Australia, and New Zealand. Technical delivery of the signal is being managed from Globecast’s Media Center in Culver City, CA.

OWNZONES Entertainment Technologies, the leading cloud-based video supply chain company is helping studios and post houses around the world respond rapidly to the growing global consumption of content through its remotely compatible cloud-based platform, OWNZONES Connect™.

OWNZONES Connect, is the next-gen content servicing and supply chain platform. The first cloud-based solution to support SMPTE IMF and ACES workflows, Connect was designed natively in the cloud to join the fragmented pieces of many post-production workflows by replacing multiple vendors, non-compatible formats and expensive data servers. The largest movie studio, or smallest indie network, can easily connect with their audiences by rapidly processing and delivering content in any format to any platform. Through Connect, users can transcode video content up to 35 times faster while reducing costs up to 90 percent.

The demand for content has increased significantly due to the COVID-19 virus. However, production has slowed dramatically, and even stopped for studios and content companies. They are looking at their vast libraries to try and fill the demand and OWNZONES is helping them conform their content and deliver it to global platforms through its cloud-based infrastructure.

Imagen, the intuitive video management platform, has extended their long-term relationship with PA Media (PA), the national news agency for the UK & Ireland and a leading multimedia content and services provider, to upgrade and enhance its video portal.

An Imagen customer since 2014, PA recently called on Imagen to update the look of its customer-facing portal to reflect the company’s new branding and improve its functionality.

The upgraded portal now features a new partner area, allowing PA to host and label third party content alongside the news agency’s own editorial output. Enhanced search functionality and metadata display enable PA’s customers to surface relevant content from the vast catalogue of newsroom-ready, customer-ready and partner content, and in doing so, increase its speed to market.

Improved analytics functions from Imagen also allow the agency to track how customers are accessing and using content from the video portal by surfacing search records and user journeys.

In addition, PA has engaged Imagen’s content licensing business – Screenocean – to represent its video content. The new licensing agreement will enable the agency to find even more new audiences for its video content and, in turn, increase its revenue streams.

Edgeware has today announced the addition of its automated optimization capability to its multi-CDN control platform StreamPilot. Referred to as AutoPilot, the feature gives broadcasters and content providers the option to automatically perform actions triggered by StreamPilot’s real-time session data when using a multi-CDN set-up

StreamPilot, which was launched at IBC in September 2019, has raised significant customer interest and rendered several trial projects. Insights from these customer discussions are now channelized into the new AutoPilot capabilities.

The AutoPilot feature identifies and automatically presents a unified view of problems that could affect users’ quality of experience, independent of which CDN is delivering the TV service to the viewer. The issues presented can be related to the device, delivery CDN, ISP or the content itself. The data is processed, grouped and presented with a classification on severity level.

By giving users the unique capability to automatically – or manually – mitigate the problems through actions such as selecting another CDN for the delivery, StreamPilot meets a growing demand from broadcasters and content providers to automatically optimize delivery, rather than presenting the data for them to then analyse and act upon.

Globecast, the global solutions provider for media, has announced a multi-year partnership with United Kingdom/Netherlands-based Outdoor Sport Channel for the worldwide distribution of its HD and 4K content to MVPDs (multichannel video programming distributors) and as the exclusive distributor in the US. The deal includes the distribution of the linear channel and video-on-demand content on all platforms including CATV, DTH, IPTV, OTT and smart TVs for North America, South America, Europe, the Russian Federation, Asia-Pacific, and exclusively in the US.

Globecast is a leading provider of both content aggregation and end-to-end media delivery for network programming from around the globe. Globecast is a preferred content provider to most US major MVPDs with direct and dedicated fiber feeds from its broadcast center in Culver City, CA. This latest deal further adds to Globecast’s growing Content Acquisition, Aggregation, & Distribution (CAAD) business.

Henk van Meer, Founder & CEO of Outdoor Sport Channel® commented, “In order to further maximize our worldwide distribution, we teamed up with Globecast as they are the ideal partner to help us ‘go global’ because that is what they do best. Globecast understands today’s operator and TV audience needs and we are keen to market, offer, and sell our channel to each and any distributing operator on the planet with a long-term vision.”

Outdoor Sport Channel® HD is an international, 24-hour global sports television networkfeaturing a vast array of outdoor, action, summer, winter sports and sports news. It distributes its HD programming worldwide via CATV, DTH satellite, IPTV, OTT, broadcast over IP, VOD, and mobile platforms.

“This distribution agreement demonstrates our value in delivering content to all types of operator platforms and our ability to partner with quality programmers to extend their reach to distributors globally. We’re eager to be working with Outdoor Sport Channel® to bring its exciting and unique international sports content to the world. It continues to affirm our successful approach to our CAAD business line,” said Berto Guzman, VP, Head of Content Acquisition, Aggregation and Distribution for Globecast Americas.

Leading B2B IT solutions provider Jigsaw24 has been named an Avid® Certified Cloud Partner – becoming the first business in the UK to earn the status.

It means the company can provide an Avid-certified solution that enables post-production professionals to edit their media from anywhere in the world.

Jigsaw24, which was already one of the country’s only Avid Elite Partners for audio, video and storage, will offer the post-production solution as part of its CCM24: Cloud Control and Management service.

Through CCM24, the company’s expert team manages and monitors customers’ cloud applications and storage platforms to help end users enjoy remote access to their projects.

David Skeggs, Head of Business Management at Jigsaw24, said: “Becoming an Avid Certified Cloud Partner reflects our fantastic relationship with Avid, our passion for cloud solutions and our unrivalled ability to help customers take full advantage of them.

“Avid’s technology allows post-production teams to work from anywhere, which opens up all kinds of possibilities for businesses in the industry.

“As an Avid Certified Cloud Partner, we can help customers realise the potential of remote or on-set editing – whether that takes the form of virtualising key hardware, enabling high-speed file transfers or expanding facility editorial capacity without increasing rent costs.”

Craig Dwyer, Vice President, Global Cloud and SaaS Practice at Avid, said: “Our expanded partnership with Jigsaw24 empowers post-production teams to fully leverage the integrated cloud tools from both companies to ensure customers have the best cloud experience possible.

Anevia, a leading provider of OTT and IPTV software solutions, will introduce the latest version of its NEA-CDN® content delivery network solution to Middle East broadcasters and media channel managers attending the CABSAT 2020 exhibition and conference in Dubai, March 31st – April 2nd. NEA-CDN v5 makes it easy for operators to scale their OTT services for peak viewing within minutes by simply adding nodes to their CDN – and then removing them when they are no longer required.

As the first cloud-native CDN solution, NEA-CDN v5 – based on the Kubernetes infrastructure – provides operators with a centrally orchestrated, hardware-agnostic, and elastic private CDN. It makes it easy to deploy – in just one click – and comes with a centralised management and analytics platform that makes it easy to operate.

“Traffic fluctuations are huge in OTT video streaming,” comments Anevia NEA-CDN Product Manager David Tencer, “and operators will most of the time only use 6% of their available CDN capacity – meaning that 94% of the capacity is usually being wasted. With this elastic CDN solution, OTT operators can ensure a high-quality experience even during peak traffic, without having to build in over-capacity.”

IABM-member PBT EU is delighted to announce that Auvi Translator Pro’s film and TV subtitler Riccardo Mimmi selects SubtitleNEXT as his subtitling system of choice to support leading film and television subtitling and localization projects

Riccardo has an impressive portfolio and has been translating and subtitling well-known movies, TV series, and documentaries from major Hollywood studios, broadcast networks and online streaming companies such as Netflix and Amazon over the course of his career. Some of the many titles he has worked on include ‘Klaus’, ‘Salvation’, ‘The Man in the High Castle’, ‘Vikings’, ‘American Hustle’, ‘The Americans’, ‘The Office’, ‘Easy’, the thriller film ‘Hold the Dark’, ‘Oprah’s Book Club’ and others.

Using SubtitleNEXT and proprietary online cloud platforms, Riccardo Mimmi’s role as a localization specialist and subtitler entails complex projects that involve translation and adaptation of content, where he has had to recreate the tone in documentaries, TV series and movies to suit the target audience.

“Subtitles have to abide to very strict requirements in my line of work,” Riccardo explains, “So I chose SubtitleNEXT which is a reliable professional subtitling software to ensure 100% accuracy, and it supports all popular formats like .stl, .srt, .dfxp, .pac, Digital Cinema and more.”

Tedial, the leading independent MAM technology solutions specialist is proud to announce that its CTO, Julian Fernandez-Campon has been selected to join the IABM EMEA Members’ Council, a forum created to fully represent European industry views, ideas and initiatives. The Council will support IABM EMEA members as they navigate the rapid changes in technology and the way in which business models impact the industry.

“The broadcast and media industry has undergone rapid change in the past five years,” explains Fernandez-Campon. The ways in which we consume content, the move to IP, the shift to cloud services, the introduction of artificial intelligence and machine learning and the adoption of IMF methodology to name but a few, has meant that broadcasters, content owners and vendors have had to significantly adapt their workflows and business strategies. The IABM is a valuable source for members in EMEA who are looking at ways that they can continue to adapt and change to meet these new industry demands.”

The IABM EMEA Members’ Council will be chaired by Ole Clausen, CEO, Danmon Group.