VUALTO, an expert in cloud-based OTT video delivery and orchestration, has partnered with ATEME, a leader in video delivery solutions for broadcast, cable, DTH, IPTV and OTT, for automated encoder integration within the VUALTO CONTROL HUB (VCH) video orchestration tool, which allows for multiple origins and encoders to be integrated seamlessly. The VCH is vendor agnostic and interoperable with a host of technology partners.

The VCH now has full integration for ATEME’s TITAN Live and TITAN Mux encoding solutions, providing integration with the TITAN Live API to automate live event streaming workflows, the ability to set specific inputs and outputs dynamically using the VCH channel configuration, provides support for redundant setups and has capabilities for on-premise and in cloud.

The automated integration with VCH makes streaming easier, removing the requirement for manual configuration and risk of error, which can be a particularly cumbersome process when using a redundant setup. The addition of ATEME’s TITAN solutions has also facilitated an extension of the VCH plugin set.

Combining the two technologies provides broadcasters with a premium quality streaming service, which is flexible, agile and entirely suited to their business model and end goals.

NINETNINE, the leading content provider to Cable and OTT platforms, has partnered with Samira TV, an Arabic channel available in Middle-East, North Africa and France, which specializes in cooking TV shows focusing on local cuisine. The two companies have produced the first French-Arab TV show, ‘Ezawj Errahal’ presented by French travel and food social media influencers Salim and Linda, known as “the traveling lovers” (Les Amoureux Voyageurs).

The 13-episode series launches on 14th February on Samira TV and will also be available on-demand and via OTT on Le Bouquet Maghreb, the leading Arabic TV package in France. The unique format will deliver an exciting, new TV cooking concept that will take viewers on a culinary trip around the world, allowing them to learn simple, original and mouthwatering recipes created by Salim and Linda while on their adventures.

Salim and Linda were the winners of the French popular TV competition format Pékin Express, which aired on M6 and attracted multi-million daily viewers. They became social media superstars and decided to travel the globe to meet people, discover new cultures and share their stories.

mediaClass, a globally active provider of OTT TV everywhere solutions, has announced its own developed AI-based recommendation Engine.

”We have been testing and measuring the success rate of the engine for some time," says mediaClass CTO Stilian Tchlakov. "For this release we have settled on two operator-selectable modes, both of which offer excellent results."

"Without giving too much away technically, mode one is based on AI analysis of personal preferences and searches; mode two is based on studying and machine learning the watching-behaviour of hundreds of thousands of anonymous subscribers” adds mediaClass Head of Research and Development Youri Kalinov. "The mediaClass AI Recommendation Engine uses state of the art technology from Liberate AI to predict and deliver viewer-specific television content recommendations. This is a step change from what has been possible in the past."

“Judging from the measurement results I have seen, the Liberate AI machine learning technology certainly gives us a significant edge," details mediaClass EVP Manelli Hosseini. "We will be providing the engine as an integral part all mediaClass deployments. We now have to decide whether to market the recommendation engine as a standalone package to offer its advantages for non-mediaClass deployments.”

Spanish telco consortium Plataforma Multimedia de Operadores (PMO) has chosen a complete video delivery technology from Anevia, a leading provider of OTT and IPTV software solutions, to power its new Zapi TV service. Zapi will give local telecom operators the resources they need to offer a wide range of subscription-based programmes for viewing on Android set-top-boxes, smart TVs, smartphones and tablets. The new resource is a joint venture by PTV Telecom and Opencable, Acutel (Association of Local Operators of Andalusia) and Aotec (National Association of Local Telecommunications Operators).

"Zapi TV is designed to be a nationwide service offering the highest possible quality of experience," comments PMO CTO José Carrillo. "We selected Anevia as a best-of-breed end-to-end video-delivery partner able to function as a single point of contact, speeding up the entire deployment and integration process. The result allows the consortium's members to offer their subscribers high quality-of-experience plus a rich set of features including cloud-based content search and personalised digital video recording. We have already announced the service and will be promoting it strongly from Q1 2020 with the aim of attracting up to 600,000 customers. The service will also include a package of sports channels for ultra-low-latency delivery."

mediaClass reports a sustained acceleration in demand for subscription based services offering video content directly to connected viewers. Bypassing traditional broadcast and satellite platforms, OTT services are typically streamed over the top – meaning over any internet connection rather than a proprietary network.

"Given the rapid changes in product offerings and market trends, the choice of OTT and streaming technology is absolutely key," says mediaClass EVP Manelli Hosseini. "The established OTT middleware products on the market are incremental improvements and add-ons to older IPTV-based systems. This leaves them with a heavy footprint requiring massive servers which are inefficient and inflexible."

"Using our detailed knowledge and long experience of TV services to develop a modern, agile architecture and approach, we invested heavily to develop a full product range from scratch. The key parameters for our customer-centric view were to speed up deployment and enable a low-cost legacy IPTV path for service providers and telcos who want to move to a world-class offer which is disruptively affordable. We have developed our own software modules for functions including a content management system, digital rights management and AI recommendation engines as well as CDN and mobile clients."

ATEME, a leader in video delivery solutions for broadcast, cable, DTH, IPTV and OTT, has been announced as a recipient of the i-Nov Innovation Contest grant for the IA4SEC project, involving its state-of-the-art video technologies.

The video industry market continues to face a changing landscape with increasing complexity of video payload standards such as HEVC, AV1, VVC / H.266 and EVC / MPEG-5 part 1. ATEME’s technology offers customers a path to the latest video techniques by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI).  

In the context of this project, ATEME proposed several levels of innovation in AI for video delivery. This included improvements in core encoding to enable bitrate reduction, Content Adaptive Encoding for higher video quality, and elastic encoding orchestration to optimize media supply chain and cloud usage. 

Mickael Raulet, VP Innovation, ATEME commented: “We are very proud to have been awarded a grant for the IA4SEC project. It highlights the value of our innovation teams and our expertise in video coding, which we have developed over time to help our customers transform their video delivery services. 

Bannister Lake announced today that MPEG dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH) video content is now fully supported through its flagship Chameleon data management product. Responding to high market demand for the integration of the popular streaming format, Bannister Lake has added DASH playback support in the Chameleon Web Server and has integrated the streaming standard as a media material within its design tool, Chameleon Designer. Utilizing Chameleon Designer, users can build sophisticated graphic templates that incorporate multiple real-time and static data sources.

The combination of DASH and Chameleon helps ensure that over-the-top (OTT) operators can take full advantage of the streaming standard's ability to adapt to changing network conditions while providing superior quality playback and simultaneously displaying timely, real-time data content. As the broadcast industry moves toward streaming and new distribution models that include multiple devices, the incorporation of the DASH streaming protocol into television technology solutions has become an industry priority. DASH has quickly become a favored international standard and is widely supported on virtually all platforms.

VOS360 Live Streaming Platform Provides Rapid Service Scaling for OTT Delivery

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Jan. 14, 2020 — Harmonic (NASDAQ: HLIT) today announced that Vidgo has launched a new OTT service powered by Harmonic's VOS®360 Live Streaming Platform. Vidgo's live TV streaming service featuring sports, news and entertainment, boasts more than 100 premium channels including ABC, Comedy Central, ESPN, Fox, and the NFL Network as well as a Latino package for Spanish-speaking viewers. By handling the complete end-to-end media processing and delivery workflow for Vidgo, Harmonic's VOS360 platform simplifies live streaming from source to screen, speeds up time to market for new channels and enables rapid service scaling.

"A large, diverse content catalog is critically important for an OTT streaming service to be successful, and Vidgo has set a high bar in this regard. Our new streaming service gives subscribers a simple, convenient way to watch live TV anytime, on any device, ensuring that sports fans never miss important matches, fights and games on some of the most popular channels available," said Shane Cannon, CEO at Vidgo. 

Mediaproxy, the leading provider of software-based IP broadcast solutions, has appointed Bright Installation Oy as its representative in Finland. The distribution and integration company will initially focus on the Australian manufacturer's compliance and monitoring systems, including the LogServer IP logger, monitor and analyzer.

Bright Installation is a standalone company within Bright Group, a rental, installation and distribution company serving the live performance, entertainment and event markets. Bright has its headquarters in Vantaa, a city in the greater metropolitan area surrounding the Finnish capital of Helsinki, and offices in the regional cities of Tampere and Turku. It also runs subsidiaries in Sweden and Norway.

Verizon Media has announced that Eros Now, a premier South Asian OTT entertainment platform, is using the Verizon Media Platform to meet global consumer demand for high quality streaming of Indian cinema.

India is home to Bollywood, the world’s largest film industry with an annual output of almost 2,000 films. Global demand for Bollywood content is growing rapidly and Eros Now has attracted over 177 million users to its service by housing over 12,000 movie titles, TV shows, Eros Now Originals, and short-format content – Eros Now Quickie. In order to retain its market leading position in India and also futureproof its ability to penetrate additional markets, Eros Now chose to migrate from its technology-dense streaming stack to a fully managed streaming service.

“As we continue our mission of bringing Bollywood content to a global audience, it’s crucial that we invest in cutting edge technologies to maintain high quality online experiences for the millions of users accessing our service from a range of devices and locations. Verizon Media’s Platform is renowned for its unparalleled streaming capabilities and high performance network, which will play an important role in helping us deliver an unrivalled user experience to our customers around the world,” said Ali Hussein, CEO, Eros Now.

24i, the industry-leading, global video experience company, today announced that it has created, and launched a new suite of applications and Subscription Video-On-Demand (VOD) services for US-based video streaming service BroadwayHD.

The premier streaming service for live theatre BroadwayHD is available online at broadwayhd.com, and via a dedicated app on iOS,Android, Apple TV, Amazon Firestick and Roku.

Included among the recent hit productions released on the service are 42nd Street and Kinky Boots, both filmed on the West End by the BroadwayHD team, along with other recent and iconic stage shows such as Cats, King and I, and An American in Paris.

“We’re committed to providing the very best Broadway streaming experience to our growing global fanbase,“ said Stewart F. Lane and Bonnie Comley, co-founders and co-owners, BroadwayHD. “We’re extremely pleased with the OTT solution provided by 24i, which has enabled us to launch our next-generation video service across multiple platforms and devices, introduce new business models and refresh and enrich our user experience. The high performance of this new platform enables us to concentrate on the quality of our content and growing the global audience for BroadwayHD.”

24i has worked in partnership with the subscriber retention management company Cleeng to deliver BroadwayHD a robust end-to-end OTT video solution that accelerates growth by simplifying the management, marketing, and monetization of its content while providing subscribers with a rich, personalized and easy to navigate experience on any device.

ADTH reports a successful 2019, its 25th anniversary year, including the opening during May of a new research and development facility in Taiwan's capital city, Taipei. 2019 also saw a major expansion of the ADTH Tolka range of broadcast, OTT and IPTV content protection products.

"Television technology is advancing faster than ever as the industry gears for the transition from HD to HD-HDR, 4K-UHD and upward to 8K," says ADTH CEO Michael Day. "Viewers have the option of larger display screens than ever. At the same time we are seeing an increased public desire to watch programmes via mobile phones and tablets. These diverging influences have the potential to coalesce into extremely high resolution wearable displays if computer users and TV audiences are significantly attracted by that mode of viewing. We see our role as offering the greatest possible choice in what, when and where TV viewers choose to watch and delivering the technology to make that possible."

The April 2019 NAB Show was ADTH's busiest ever exhibition in terms of product introductions, including the DV3358, a competitively priced new satellite IRD providing full support for conditional access. DVB-S/S2 input compatible, it outputs TS over IP, ASI and 3G-SD

Atlanta DTH, Inc. (ADTH) announces that it has joined the SRT Alliance, a broadcast media industry collaboration created to develop an open-source protocol allowing low-latency video streaming over the internet. ADTH will provide full support for the SRT (Secure Reliable Transport) protocol.

Developed and pioneered by Haivision, the SRT protocol optimizes streaming performance across unpredictable networks with secure streams and easy firewall traversal. It accounts for packet loss, jitter, and fluctuating bandwidth, maintaining the integrity and quality of a video stream.

"With its 25 years of experience in the broadcast and telecommunication sectors, ADTH is a very welcome addition to our membership," comments Haivision CCO & EVP Strategic Alliances Peter Maag. "With increasing support from across the entire industry, SRT is rapidly becoming the globally preferred standard for low-latency video streaming."

"Efficient and effective standards are essential to the advancement of any industry, not least in the OTT streaming sector where signal delivery needs to overcome many technical variables," adds ADTH founder and Managing Director Michael Day. "The SRT Alliance's aims and objectives are in full accord with our own strategy of promoting the highest possible video quality-of-experience securely, efficiently and at the lowest possible latency. We are SRT-ready."

Argentine telecommunications facilities provider Servicios y Telecomunicaciones SA (SYT) has chosen a complete mediaClass OTT TV Everywhere solution as the core of a newly launched Rocstar TV Everywhere platform. The system is designed to allow carriers, cable operators and ISPs to offer own-brand TV Everywhere OTT products based on a strong channel line-up and premium content. All functions are provided through an operator-class version of mediaClass software, customised and integrated into servers at SYT's headquarters in Buenos Aires.

"We signed the agreement with SYT at the April 2019 NAB Show and have been very busy adding specific features for Rocstar TV local markets," says mediaClass EVP Manelli Hosseini. "This new service will allow easy white-labeling for carriers, ISPs and cable operators to offer full TV Everywhere OTT and IPTV with their own brand and their own app. The system includes all the advanced TV Everywhere features – content source processing and storage, digital rights management, subscriber management, viewer analytics and an AI-based recommendation engine. We have also built in true multi-tenancy which is often claimed but not delivered. The resultant service is very easy to use, includes automatic configuration, and is highly cost efficient."

Anevia, a leading provider of OTT and IPTV software solutions, for the expansion of its multiscreen TV service.

The expansion was driven by the exponential growth of the market locally, as well as geographical inroads of the multiscreen TV service into other South American countries. To scale up, the telecommunication service provider chose the Anevia Embedded Distributed Storage (EDS) technology, where the same servers are used for both computing and storage. This enables costs to be kept under control by halving the number of physical rack units needed.

The operator has also continued expanding its CDN infrastructure using Anevia’s NEA-CDN® solution which enables it to ensure high quality during football matches and other peak traffic events as well as supporting the cutting-edge features required for interactive OTT television.

"We are thrilled that Anevia’s technology has once again been trusted to deliver premium services for OTT television, after four years of spectacular success with this OTT offering in Argentina," says Anevia CEO Laurent Lafarge. "Our EDS technology is widely recognised to be much more reliable and scalable than a traditional NAS architecture. It enables TV operators to thrive as they scale up."