Harmonic expands the horizon of live video

Harmonic focuses its presence at the show on three areas: cloud optimization, personalization of the viewer experience in sports broadcasts, and scaling live video distribution.

Thierry Fautier, vice president of video strategy at Harmonic, has opened the presentation in IBC 2019 ensuring that “our goal is to scale video to the real world in a smarter, faster and simpler way.”

Harmonic focuses its presence at the show on three areas: cloud optimization, personalization of the viewer experience in sports broadcasts, and scaling live video distribution.

Fautier has highlighted that at this moment they are already 40,000 live OTT channels operating worldwide. Of them, 6.9 million subscribers receive the service thanks to its VOS SaaS technology. That means that more than 2 billion pixels are processed per second with this Harmonic solution.

The company announced today at IBC a Innovative deliverability for your cloud-native VOS platform providing telecom, cable and mobile operators with real-time scalability for high-demand, mission-critical live video streaming services. This new capability has been successfully deployed by a leading mobile network operator to deliver live sports content using a multi-CDN with Harmonic's CDN partners.

Operated as a fully managed service, this expanded video delivery functionality uses a single control platform and a multi-layer and multi-CDN approach which leverages partnerships established with third-party CDNs and video delivery nodes deployed by Harmonic. With no upfront investment, this unique SaaS offering enables operators to achieve unprecedented scale, reduce costs and improve quality of experience for live video streaming and on-demand content.

City Bar, senior vice president of Video Business at Harmonic, said: "The biggest challenge with live video streaming is being able to handle unexpected spikes in viewership, especially during premium events. This new access network capability for our VOS offerings provides operators with the ultimate solution for high-quality live video streaming: immediate scalability, critical reliability and smart, flexible pricing models. It is essentially insurance for live video delivery and a unique capability that cannot be achieved with other business solutions. as usual.”

Using this innovative extension to Harmonic's VOS offerings, operators can deliver exceptional quality video streaming experiences. By optimally leveraging multiple delivery paths, Harmonic's new capability gives operators the power and confidence to scale quickly, while economically supporting the quality demands of high-quality live video streaming.

Collaboration with Aveco

Harmonic and the automation company Aveco has joined forces to simplify the transition to new workflows for a hybrid playout.

The concept is Develop hybrid on-premises and cloud workflows for applications of playout. Through this collaboration, operators can now use a single interface to control hybrid on-premises and cloud broadcast workflows for more efficient delivery of broadcast and OTT channels, including live streaming.

Pavel Potuzak, CEO of Aveco, emphasizes that “teaming with Harmonic makes broadcasting simple, no matter where in the world you are. Our MCR system uses a single interface for local, remote and cloud broadcasting, giving operators the flexibility to deploy part of their workflow on premises and part of it in the cloud, depending on what makes the most sense for their business.”

media servers VOS 360 y Spectrum X from Harmonic provide the cloud and local infrastructure and management capabilities necessary to deliver scheduled and live content for broadcast and OTT platforms. with the system Astra MCR From Aveco, operators can easily manage live operations at multiple locations through a common user interface.

Harmonic is the only technology provider to offer open integration for its cloud-based local playout and channel origination solutions to enable a true hybrid workflow under third-party control.

In the hybrid workflow environment, operators have the flexibility to use their local broadcast system for complex channels, fixed lineups and long-term channels, and a cloud solution for disaster recovery, pop-up and 24x7 channels. The result is efficient and profitable channel operation.

Sports customization

Harmonic, Google y 3SS have developed an experience to customize live sports on Android TV offering essential bespoke features such as picture-in-picture, multi-view and custom tiling.

At both the Harmonic (1.B20) and Google (14.E02) stands you can see how pay-TV operators can now deliver personalized, low-latency live sports experiences on OTT and hybrid set-top boxes (STB) using Harmonic's VOS cloud-native live video platform, a powerful UHD STB and the 3SS 3Ready app.

The demo incorporates Harmonic's VOS software platform, which encompasses content preparation via the origin server, hosted on the Google Cloud platform. Enabling unified OTT and broadcast workflows, the VOS platform ensures low latency and exceptional image quality for all multistream applications, enhancing the live sports experience.

Shahar Bar highlights that “this bespoke linear and live sports experience on Android TV is a breakthrough in our industry, made possible by a unique cloud-native live video platform provided by Harmonic, a powerful UHD STB powered by Android TV and an intuitive user experience enabled by 3SS.”

For its part, Pierre Donath, Chief Product Officer at 3SS, recognizes that "customers' need for live sports is super simple. It has to be live and at the highest quality. The reality is that OTT live streams typically have a latency of between 30 and 90 seconds and are often far from ultra-high quality. “Together with Harmonic, we challenged what is possible and created the next level of OTT live sports and personalized linear experience by combining our industry-leading technologies powered by Android TV.”