GO Malta launches new sports channels with Imagine Communications

To support its growing portfolio of sports rights and number of channels, GO Malta has implemented a complete media and broadcast management architecture with Imagine Communications.

The new system has allowed GO to more effectively serve and manage multiple channels, many of them live, maximizing operational efficiency and guaranteeing an excellent user experience.

GO is the leading quad service provider in Malta, offering mobile phone, landline, internet and IPTV/OTT services to over 500,000 customers.

Since acquiring Multiplus in 2007, GO has rapidly grown its television properties and premium sports rights. In 2018, GO and Melita, a Maltese telecommunications services company, pooled their sports rights and began operating TSN (Total Sports Network), with channels made available to subscribers of either platform. By 2021, operating the increased number of channels had become cumbersome and laborious with GO's existing system, and the decision was made to commission an entirely new broadcast architecture.

Martin Abela, senior director of video operations at GO, notes that "the playout solution that Imagine proposed not only addressed the challenges we had defined, but provided more benefits than we expected. Imagine's playout architecture efficiently supports multiple channels, so we can operate our channels with fewer servers. Its client-server approach gives us much greater control and easier management of playlists, especially during live events. We also benefited from improved graphics and pop-ups. animated images, automated archiving and recovery, and much better redundancy management.”

“Aunque la nueva solución de emisión ha mejorado significativamente nuestra eficiencia operativa, nuestro objetivo final es ofrecer una mejor experiencia al cliente y, gracias a Imagine, lo hemos conseguido”, añade Abela.

La nueva infraestructura está construida sobre la plataforma integrada de playout Versio and the automatización ADC. El material se gestiona y el control del flujo de trabajo lo proporciona Versio Content Portal, incluyendo la captura de la programación en directo en el servidor de vídeo Nexio. También se incluye en el nuevo sistema el enrutamiento SDI a través de una matriz Platinum.

El nuevo sistema de GO está diseñado con una redundancia de 10+4 canales, en la que cuatro canales Versio de reserva protegen las 10 salidas de programa principales. Los dos canales comerciales más importantes tienen cada uno su propia copia de seguridad, mientras que los otros dos motores Versio redundantes son capaces de asumir automáticamente cualquiera de los otros servicios en caso de que sea necesario. La inteligencia en la automatización de la emisión sincroniza la lista de reproducción para que el canal de reserva tome el relevo en pocos segundos, sin problemas y con una interrupción mínima.