San Francisco-based IP video processing and delivery vendor Envivio enhanced its overseas customer base with the addition of Sky News Arabia and Viaplay, the company said in a pair of news releases.
Sky News Arabia is using Envivio's video processing technology to compress and stream live video content to its Web for OTT viewing on PCs and mobile devices around the world. Viaplay, a TV, film and sport delivery services provider in the Nordic countries, selected Envivio's software-based encoders to extend streaming of live channels to IP set-top boxes.
Sky News went with Envivio, in part, because the technology offered speed-to-market, said Ihsan Yahya, project engineer at Sky News Arabia.
"[T[hey were able to get our OTT service up and running in three weeks," he said in the news release.
That service, a joint venture between Abu Dhabi Media Investment Corporation (ADMIC) and Britain's BSkyB "offers fresh, fast and independent news across multiple media platforms to audiences across the Middle East and North Africa," the news release explained.
Viaplay, which is part of the Modern Times Group (MTG), an international entertainment broadcasting operation that spans four continents with free TV, pay TV, radio and content production businesses, is involved in "one of the first large scale pay-TV projects in Europe to make use of linear over-the-top (OTT) delivery to STBs," the service provider said in the news release.
Viaplay's streaming set-top boxes were introduced into the region in April as part of a way to consume Viaplay's premium content on the TV, allowing MTG to use OTT and complement Viaplay's traditional IPTV, cable and satellite services. The service is delivered over the open Internet using Microsoft Smooth Streaming technology to PCs and the set-top boxes.
"Broadcasters no longer need to implement separate architectures for Web and 'traditional' television distribution," Julien Signes, Envivio's CEO and president, said in the news release. "By embracing OTT and a streaming set-top box approach, Viaplay has shown that it recognizes the efficiency and scalability it offers both for delivery and storage, and that IP is clearly going mainstream."
For more:
- Envivio distributed this Sky News Arabia news release
- Envivio released this Viaplay news release
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