PlayBox Technology, the leading playout and streaming provider for media companies worldwide, has worked with Hala London to transform its playout workflows. The new playout automation platform encompasses scheduling, ingest, graphics and playout.
Hala London started life as an online visual radio station, providing content in English and Arabic that promoted peace, love and spirituality. It was so successful that they decided to create a television station with the same values. Today Hala London broadcasts news, music, entertainment and culture to the world, including live programmes and specially commissioned features.
As the success of the channel grew, so the management team determined to invest in sophisticated and streamlined playout facilities, to ensure the highest quality while working as effectively as possible. Having considered the range of solutions on the market, it selected an integrated package of software systems from PlayBox.
“The philosophy of our channel is to find better ways of communicating so we can all live in harmony,” said Jalal Shmoh, broadcast administrator at Hala London. “We want those values in the way we work, too, so we looked for a system that would give us the flexibility to express the channel’s personality, and respond to live events, without imposing stressful challenges for our operators. PlayBox showed us that they could provide a simple, intuitive environment which allowed us to concentrate on our channel and took care of all the underlying technology.”
The system supplied by PlayBox starts with CaptureBox to manage content ingest and asset management. ListBox allows the channel to be scheduled by simply dragging content onto a timeline. TitleBox provides high quality graphics, designed and inserted through a very simple user interface. Finally, AirBox is the playout engine, providing fully automated delivery of the planned schedule, but allowing for live interventions when required.
“Hala London achieves a very great deal: it creates a lot of original content, and it delivers 24/7 streaming to a global audience,” said Philip Neighbour, COO at PlayBox Technology. “Our modular TV channel software is designed exactly for people like Hala London: it provides a seamless, streamlined working environment which allows each member of the team to focus on their jobs, confident that the high level of automation will respond precisely. The result is a premium quality of experience, from a highly economical operation.”
PlayBox Technology is a media and entertainment technology company delivering over 20,000 master entertainment streams every day. Drawing on 20 years’ experience of innovation in channel in a box technology, it now offers a broad range of software solutions running on standard hardware or in the cloud.
Each media service will have its own unique requirements, so PlayBox provides workflow solutions in modular software, which includes tools for all aspects of planning and managing a group of broadcast or streaming channels. Capabilities include content servers, graphics tools and templates, and planning and scheduling systems as well as the mission-critical playout automation. Designed for minimal operator interaction with non-specialist staff, the intuitive user interfaces are implemented in HTML5. Interfaces are tailored for each user, and are accessible on any device.
