LONDON—Synamedia appointed Dr Tzvi Gerstl Chief Executive Officer. Paul Segre, who has served as CEO for the past six years, will transition to the role of Executive Chairman, where he will continue to provide strategic guidance and support the company's long-term growth agenda.

The company said that the appointment marks the next step in Synamedia's development following the divestiture of its video network business.

Earlier in June, Lumine Group Inc. announced that one of its subsidiaries has entered into an agreement to acquire the video network business from Synamedia. As part of the agreement, Lumine is setting up a new independent company operating under the name of its primary product name, Quortex.

In the wake of the deal, which will give it a sharper strategic focus and a streamlined operating model, Synamedia said it will focus on helping operators and media companies attract, engage, and monetize audiences through exceptional video experiences.

Gerstl has played a central role in shaping and executing the strategy at the heart of Synamedia's next phase. He has driven significant improvements in innovation, execution, and customer outcomes. Under his leadership, the company has accelerated and established new momentum through customer wins with BFBS, MTN, Mileto, Partner Communications, and YES as well as the launch of GO Shorts and the award-winning Senza Ignite.

"We have spent the last several years transforming Synamedia, strengthening our portfolio and positioning the company around a clear strategy focused on our customers and the future of video," said Paul Segre, Executive Chairman of Synamedia. "With the simplification of our business model and strong momentum across the company, now is the right time to transition leadership to the person best positioned to accelerate our growth.

"Tzvi understands our customers because he spends time with them, our technology because he's helped shape it, and our business because he has been instrumental in its success," continued Segre. "The Board and I are confident there is no better person to lead Synamedia into its next chapter. I look forward to continuing to support Tzvi and the leadership team as Executive Chairman."

"The media industry is navigating profound change as audiences increasingly expect video experiences that are personalized, mobile, and available everywhere," said Gerstl. "At the same time, operators and media companies need to grow audiences, create new revenue streams, and reduce complexity. That is exactly where Synamedia can make a real difference.

"The future of video will be shaped by those who can attract audiences, monetize effectively, and simplify operations,” he added. “Synamedia brings together streaming, advertising, monetization, security, and audience engagement to help customers achieve those outcomes. I am proud to lead one of the most talented teams in the industry and excited about the value we can create with our customers and partners as we enter Synamedia's next chapter."

TORONTO—Lumine Group Inc. has announced that one of its subsidiaries has entered into an agreement to acquire the video network business from Synamedia.

When the deal is completed, Lumine will set up a new independent company operating under the name of its primary product name, Quortex.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Headquartered in the UK, Synamedia is a global provider of video software solutions helping operators, broadcasters and media companies transform how video is delivered, experienced and monetised. With more than 30 years of industry expertise, Synamedia combines cloud and AI technologies, operational scale, managed services, and deep domain knowledge.

“The Synamedia Video Network business will be a meaningful addition to Lumine’s growing media ecosystem,” said Tony Garcia, chief operating officer at Lumine Group. “On completion, this acquisition will deepen our presence in the Media supply chain domain, with particular focus on video processing, broadcast delivery and live streaming. Consistent with Lumine’s decentralization strategy, the business will operate independently under its primary product name, ‘Quortex’. We look forward to welcoming this global team and its customers to Lumine, to share our best practices, and to learn from their decades of industry insight.”

“This transaction on completion will mark an exciting new chapter for both Synamedia and Quortex,” explained Paul Segre, CEO of Synamedia. “This will create two distinct businesses with clear strategic direction and strong category positioning, allowing both to move faster, innovate more effectively and deepen the value they deliver to customers around the world. We look forward to working closely with Lumine over the coming weeks to ensure a smooth transition for our valued employees, customers and partners.”

Quortex has a proven track record of building and delivering intelligent video solutions across cloud, on-premise and hybrid environments. Customers include broadcasters, media companies, telcos and streamers. Its portfolio and services address some of the industry’s most pertinent challenges today, including preparing for the pending C-Band transition in the U.S., transitioning from satellite to IP, delivering high quality viewing experiences and monetizing services.

The acquisition is anticipated to close in the near future, subject to customary closing conditions and completion of applicable employee consultation processes.

In the wake of the deal, Synamedia said it is embarking on its next chapter by reimagining the future of viewing experiences and launching an integrated portfolio that helps operators grow audiences, accelerate monetization, innovate faster, and simplify operations

Segre explained that “for too long, the video industry has watched the battle for audience attention move elsewhere. Consumer expectations have changed, economic pressures have increased, and operators need new ways to engage viewers, grow audiences, and compete effectively. Synamedia is dedicated to changing that dynamic. By bringing together the engagement and discovery experiences of mobile and the large screen, consumers can enjoy new experiences that were previously unimaginable and our customers, the operators, can win back audiences and thrive again.”

The company noted that its integrated portfolio of Go, Senza, Iris, ContentArmor, and Gravity, combine deep video expertise with next-generation technologies to help operators innovate faster, grow audiences, and compete more effectively in the attention economy.

Synamedia Go delivers streaming, audience engagement, and monetisation across mobile and big-screen experiences. Recently expanded with GO Smart and GO Shorts, it adds machine learning-driven personalisation and short-form content experiences designed to engage new generations of viewers.

Synamedia Senza reimagines the viewing experience through cloud-rendered user interfaces and rapid innovation. With Senza Ignite, operators can transform previously deployed and hardware-constrained devices into modern, continuously evolving viewing platforms without hardware replacement.

Synamedia Iris unlocks new revenue streams through advanced targeted and addressable advertising across broadcast, IP, OTT, and hybrid services, enabling more effective monetisation across every screen.

Beyond Go, Senza, and Iris, Synamedia continues to invest across its broader portfolio to help operators grow audiences, protect profitability, and deliver exceptional viewing experiences. Synamedia’s security portfolio, including ContentArmor’s industry-leading watermarking technology, helps operators protect premium content and stay ahead of piracy, while Synamedia Gravity enhances connectivity through intelligent broadband management to simplify the delivery of broadband services of the highest quality.

“This is a truly exciting time for Synamedia and our industry,” said Dr Tzvi Gerstl, GM Media Cloud Technology, Synamedia. “The pressure to reinvent the viewing experience has never been greater, and our portfolio is now hyper-focused on helping our customers lead that transformation. By bringing together the engagement and discovery experiences audiences embrace on mobile with innovative large-screen experiences powered by cloud and AI, we are enabling operators to redefine video entertainment wherever audiences choose to watch. The battle for attention is far from over, and our platform, technology, and expertise help our customers win it.”

Media organization and military charity British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS) has selected Synamedia to deliver its next-generation global digital platform.

Synamedia will build and evolve the organization’s new media ecosystem under the working title of “The Hub.” It will feature Synamedia technologies, including Synamedia Go, Quortex Play and Fluid EdgeCDN.

The program will launch in phases with a modern digital service comparable with leading OTT platforms. It will consolidate BFBS services into a single, secure and streamlined experience. The program will introduce new content formats beyond traditional broadcasting and deliver personalized and secure access across multiple devices.

“Our goal has always been to ensure the U.K. Armed Forces and their families can access trusted media experiences wherever they are, be that on ships, bases or in remote locations worldwide,” BFBS CEO Ben Chapman said. “This partnership gives us scale and the technological function to deliver on that promise, representing an innovative change in how we offer content in a personalized and secure way.”

The announcement comes following the 10-year renewal of the U.K. Ministry of Defence’s contract with BFBS, Synamedia said, reaffirming its role as a trusted, secure global military broadcaster supporting U.K. Armed Forces members wherever they serve.

As a longstanding and essential provider of media services to defense audiences worldwide, BFBS continues to play a central role in keeping personnel informed, entertained and connected across some of the most complex and challenging operating environments, Synamedia said.

Following detailed technical evaluation and industry consultation with support from consultancy Spicy Mango, Synamedia’s appointment concludes a rigorous process to help shape the future of secure media delivery to members of the U.K. Armed Forces and their families worldwide.

“With the digital transformation of its content platform, BFBS has a bold vision and an innovative roadmap to make it a reality,” Synamedia CEO Paul Segre said. “Our cloud-native end-to-end technologies, streaming and content delivery capabilities, security expertise and professional services team are ideally suited to complex transformation projects just like this. We will enable BFBS to focus its investment where it has the greatest impact, including delivering a distinctive, high-quality user experience wherever they might be.”

LONDON—Video software provider Synamedia has rolled out GO Shorts as part of its expanded Synamedia Go OTT platform. Synamedia said that it designed GO Shorts to offer operators an alternative way to engage mobile-first, Gen Z audiences while retaining existing subscribers.

An extension of the Synamedia Go platform, GO Shorts uses AI to transform an operator's existing content library into a personalized, mobile-first, short-form experience, without requiring new production workflows and without replacing any infrastructure already in place. AI identifies and surfaces clips tailored to each user's viewing behavior, integrates third-party content, and enables fluid movement from short to long-form with a single tap. This means that a proof of concept can be live in just days.

Dr Tzvi Gerstl, executive vice president of media technology at Synamedia, explained that "the streamers who win with Gen Z won't be the ones who simply mimic the existing and tired lean-back experience or the ones who build something new from scratch. They'll be the ones who figure out how to make what they already have feel native to these audiences. GO Shorts does that and it does it in a timeframe that makes experimentation easy, not just theoretical."

"Digital native, younger subscribers sign up, then leave,” he added. “They watch on phones, not televisions. They navigate by scroll, not search. And increasingly, they spend more time on micro-drama platforms than on Netflix, Disney+ or Amazon Prime Video as confirmed by recent Omdia analysis of US mobile viewing data. The conventional responses to this don't work. Pivoting entirely to a Gen Z experience risks alienating existing subscribers. Adding features at the margins doesn't go far enough. Building a separate platform is expensive and slow. GO Shorts offers a distinct, alternative approach."

The new offering means that operators could launch a separate Gen Z-focused app alongside their flagship service. GO Shorts provides both the content engine and the audience engagement layer on a shared infrastructure. Using a single platform for different services allows operators to reduce complexity and costs.

Synamedia Go is a modular SaaS OTT platform designed to simplify how operators build, launch and evolve their video services. It enables providers to incrementally launch new capabilities, experiences and revenue opportunities. With a layered set of modules – GO Core, GO Plus, GO Smart and GO Shorts – operators can easily add AI-powered capabilities, expand monetization, and drive deeper audience engagement.

The Go platform is already deployed with customers including Mileto in Brazil, MTN's multi-market platforms across Africa; and Partner Communications in Israel.

Synamedia will demo GO Shorts for the first time at the 2026 NAB Show between April 18 and 22 on booth W2851.

More information is available here.

LONDON—Synamedia will unveil a new version of its Quortex PowerVu cloud-native video distribution solution using industry standards to satellite-to-IP transitions that eliminates the need for baseband workflows and complex infrastructure during the 2026 NAB Show, April 18-22, at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Quortex PowerVu offers a cloud-controlled edge playout alternative to the existing distribution environment, transforming video distribution to broadcast stations based on an IP-native, software-based architecture. It reduces costs and operational complexity by up to 80% and enables resilient distribution, precise ad and promo control and seamless localization at scale.

The solution enables U.S. broadcasters and their 200-250 affiliates to save millions of dollars a year by eliminating complex on-prem infrastructure, vendor lock-in and high energy consumption. Instead, it gives national content owners end-to-end control of their distribution while empowering stations with simpler operations and greater autonomy to serve their local markets. With this dramatically streamlined workflow, Quortex PowerVu unlocks new monetization opportunities, including dynamic ad insertion.

Quortex PowerVu distributes national feeds to affiliates over a CDN. Each affiliate then creates fully customized linear services using only the content it needs at the edge. This results in scalable localization, more flexibility to respond to breaking news or lineup changes and higher system availability. Until now, stations had no option but to decode the incoming national program feed with station-specific elements before encoding and distributing it across over-the-air channels and MVPD platforms.

A single cloud platform, Quortex PowerVu dynamically generates per station per channel schedules. It reduces costs and operational complexity by up to 80% by improving resilience and eliminating the need for multiple scheduling systems at each station. In most cases, the only on-site hardware requirement is a 1:1 Media Edge Gateway (MEG) that will cut CAPEX, energy and maintenance costs.

During the NAB Show, Kenelm Deen, director of solutions management for B2B Distribution at Synamedia will speak about B2B video distribution strategies. Sessions include:

• “Beyond Boundaries: Hybrid Broadcast Distribution – Multipath Last-Mile Connectivity Across Satellite, Fiber, 5G and LEO,” a paper to be delivered at the Broadcast Engineering and IT (BEIT) Conference on Sunday, April 19, at 11 a.m. PDT.
• “Managing the Complexity of a Global Media Operation: Lessons Learned from Transformation at Scale,” a BEIT panel on Tuesday, April 21 , at noon PDT.
• The Future of Satellite Replacement breakfast presentation at The Renaissance Hotel on Tuesday, April 21, at 7:30am PDT.

See Synamedia at 2026 NAB Show booth W2851.

More information is available on the company’s website.

LONDON—Synamedia has announced that during the 2026 NAB Show, it will demonstrate AI by Quortex, a new set of just-in-time AI-capabilities for its Quortex portfolio that reduce costs and resources.

Synamedia reported that AI by Quortex is designed to identify opportunities to create value and activate capabilities "just-in-time" to support specific workflows, events, or other business needs, saving unnecessary spend and resources for video processing, distribution and delivery. This approach challenges the traditional model of always-on AI processing by applying intelligence only when it delivers measurable value.

"The difference between AI hype and real-world use cases comes down to measurable value creation," said Gwendal Simon, senior director of technology, Video Network, Synamedia. "AI by Quortex is a natural extension of our 'just-in-time' philosophy that eliminates the traditional wasteful approach of constantly using resources when the real value is only achieved at specific points in time. These new innovations pinpoint exactly when AI is needed across video distribution, processing and delivery – eliminating waste and enabling more impact."

Synamedia provides real-time intelligence and processing at scale, leveraging Amazon Web Services (AWS), including Amazon Bedrock and AWS Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA). The Quortex smart sampling technology dramatically improves the efficiency of live video understanding by identifying the moments that matter — before invoking foundation models through Amazon Bedrock.

Rather than continuously processing fixed frame batches, AI by Quortex triggers AI only when meaningful changes or events are detected in the video or audio stream. This just-in-time approach can reduce live video understanding costs by up to ten times, while powering applications including content moderation, clipping, metadata enrichment, and enhanced searchability. In parallel, AWS EFA enables AI-based region-of-interest detection without impacting video processing instances, improving visual quality in critical areas while optimizing bitrate efficiency.

Synamedia said the AI by Quortex innovations could be categorized into three areas. It described those three areas as follows:

• Content Understanding comprises plugins that transform video into intelligent assets by automating chapters and highlights, enhancing discoverability, and enriching metadata. In real-time, Six Floor Solutions generates the metadata tags required for deep content understanding along with live automatic clipping and highlights. AWS powers the metadata enrichment and content detection capabilities, with Amazon Bedrock enabling advanced AI-driven content understanding and automated tagging.
• Real-time Processing tools improve video quality, enhance accessibility, and enable real-time enhancements such as captioning, translation, and content adaptation by applying intelligence directly into the video workflows. Third-party tools such as Lingopal for AI-generated, accurate real-time translating and dubbing for livestream and VOD, and Yuzzit for live clipping and automatic content verticalization are prominently featured within this pillar.
• Operational Simplicity capabilities reduce complexity with AI-assisted deployment such as natural language workflow configurations or automated report generation, proactive monitoring, and guided operational insights.

Synamedia's Quortex portfolio comprises: Quortex Link, a pay-as-you-use, self-service multi-tenant SaaS distribution platform; Quortex PowerVu, a secure, cloud-native video distribution solution; Quortex Play, a just-in-time, direct-to-consumer streaming platform; and Quortex Switch, the industry's first standards-based CDN switching solution for enhanced multi-CDN management.

AI by Quortex will debut in the Innovation Corner of Synamedia's booth, W2851, at The 2026 NAB Show. To schedule a NAB Show demo, visit this website.

LONDON—Sports marketing agency Pitch International has gone live with cloud-based distribution of Emirates Football Association Challenge Cup matches with the help of broadcast services provider Globecast and Synamedia’s Quortex Link cloud distribution platform.

Using Synamedia’s Quortex Link, integrated with Globecast’s managed services platform, broadcasters can receive matches via IP or satellite.

The FA Cup, a knockout competition for English teams, is said to be the world’s oldest football tournament. It attracted nearly 100 million viewers during the 2023-24 season. Pitch owns the broadcast rights across western Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Through its partnership with Globecast and Synamedia it now is offering broadcasters in these markets IP-based or satellite reception of matches, all managed seamlessly on the Globecast platform. 

Pitch selected Globecast’s Connect Live SRT platform, powered by Synamedia’s SaaS-based Quortex Link, for high-quality, low-latency IP delivery to affiliates across multiple territories. Quortex Link provides Globecast with the scalability, robustness and operational confidence required to support a dense schedule of matches while maintaining broadcast-grade performance. Quortex Link also allows Globecast to tailor each broadcaster’s feed to the correct video format and frame rate. 

By combining Quortex Link’s pay-as-you-go cloud distribution with traditional satellite services, Globecast delivers a best-of-both-worlds approach, providing right holders and broadcasters flexibility. The workflow ensures security, redundancy, reach and predictable performance, even during the most logistically complex rounds of the competition.

More information is available on the Globecast and Synamedia websites.

STAINES-UPON-THAMES, U.K.—Synamedia today announced Chris Le May and Henry Rivero have joined its Iris ad-tech team.

Le May, who has 25 years of experience in TV and digital media, joins the company as director of advanced advertising. Rivero comes to Synamedia with a broadcaster’s perspective as the former vice president of advanced advertising and innovation at RTL Group. He takes on the role of business development lead for advanced advertising.

Before joining Synamedia, Le May held leadership roles at DataXu and the European Broadcaster Exchange (EBX), a broadcaster-led joint venture. He has worked closely with Sky, BBC, RTL and Channel 4, driving innovation in addressable TV, crossplatform monetization and advanced advertising strategies across Europe, Synamedia said.

In his previous role at RTL Group, Rivero managed technology and product road maps across broadcast, digital and social advertising. He also led the teams responsible for data and programmatic advertising. Rivero has advised several media companies, including Xandr, BBC Studios and Bertelsmann, helping them navigate advanced advertising and digital transformation, the company said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

PARIS AND LONDON—At IBC2025, Orange and Synamedia have announced a new integration of their CDN solutions that they are billing as a “first-of-its-kind collaboration” between a telco CDN (content delivery network) and a multi-CDN platform switching provider.

During the show, Sept. 12 to 15 in Amsterdam, the two companies will showcase how international content providers can expand their coverage and reach new markets with the combined solution.

More specifically, the partnership will see Orange’s CDN integrated with Synamedia’s Quortex Switch multi-CDN platform. This will provide customers with broader reach – especially in the Middle East and Africa region, where Orange has an extensive footprint.

“This alliance showcases how any CDN customer can now easily benefit from Orange’s strengths in CDN, particularly across the Middle East and Africa, by taking advantage of this partnership to create an eco-system with Synamedia’s multi-CDN management system,” explained Cédric Hardouin, vice president of CDN and edge at Orange Wholesale. “Orange’s CDN stands out for its ability to extend content providers’ reach while ensuring optimal quality of service. It offers a powerful way to scale global content delivery, backed by a trusted European partner.”

“This is our first partnership with a telecom-grade CDN provider, and it breaks new ground by extending the reach of reliable, scalable CDNs to emerging markets thanks to Orange’s CDN proof of performance in the Middle East and Africa,” added Ed Allfrey, executive vice president and general manager of Video Network, Synamedia. “Orange has demonstrated the importance of its services’ low latency, compliance and privacy and now it has another string to its bow with seamless CDN switching.”

Launched in March 2025, Quortex Switch’s API-based integration and advanced configuration capabilities offer unparalleled flexibility, enabling customers to expand distribution without altering existing infrastructure or disrupting current CDN partnerships. It allows them to streamline delivery based on Quality of Experience metrics and features the ability to segment viewers based on their geo-location.

Based on the latest industry standards, the Quortex Switch SaaS-based tool simplifies the design of multi-CDN systems while supporting low latency streaming at high quality and disaster recovery as required. It uses traffic balancing and intelligent content delivery to dynamically route end-users to the best content sources and enables mid-stream switching across multiple CDNs for uninterrupted viewing experiences, the companies said.

Orange operates one of the most extensive and trusted CDN footprints in the Middle East and Africa, enabling international content providers to scale securely, cost-effectively, and in full compliance with local regulations. This infrastructure gives them a clear advantage in reaching high-growth, underserved markets across the region. The partnership also aligns with Orange’s strategic vision to support the growing demand for content across the Middle East and Africa and foster new collaborative opportunities within the CDN ecosystem.

Synamedia will be showcasing the collaboration during IBC2025 at Hall 1, B49.

LONDON—During IBC2025, video software provider, Synamedia, will be showcasing a number of key improvements to Synamedia Go, Quortex Play, and its dynamic ad insertion offerings that highlight how AI is redefining video networking, advertising, service operations and the user experience.

IBC2025 will also mark the European debut of Quortex Switch, the industry’s first standards-based dynamic CDN switching solution, with new integration with Quortex Play, the company said.

“At Synamedia, we are deeply embedding AI across our portfolio to deliver tangible benefits – from personalized user experiences to smarter advertising, automated operations for improved ROI, and video quality improvements,” explained Paul Segre, CEO, Synamedia. “Our customers are already exploring how to use AI agents to configure networks and optimise workflows, showing how quickly the landscape is changing. With these innovations and our talented engineering teams, we are proud to be shaping the next era of streaming and sharing our vision at IBC 2025.”

In the run-up to the show, Synamedia also announced that it is joining Akamai, Cisco, and CDN77 as a founding member of OpenMOQ, a new consortium to advance MOQ, the emerging IETF standard for high performance publish/subscribe communications. OpenMOQ will build open-source software to enable MOQ for media use-cases including ingest, primary distribution, and delivery at scale. This shared foundation will avoid fragmented proprietary stacks and foster industry-wide collaboration. The consortium is open to new founding members, united by the belief that MOQ is the next-generation protocol for video streaming.

During IBC2025, one year after the launch of the Synamedia Senza, Synamedia also reported that it will present its vision of how viewing experiences will evolve over the next five years.

Using AI to unlock new levels of content discovery and personalised viewing experiences, the Senza and Synamedia GO demo blends together TV and streaming with videos from any social platform and it provides a seamless user experience across TV screens and mobile devices, the company reported.

For example, when a viewer is watching a basketball game and a friend notifies them on social media that they are live streaming from the court, the user can add their friend’s feed – and others – to the screen. An AI ad generator, connected to the Synamedia Iris addressable advertising platform, then creates a video ad for that team’s shirt, tailored for whoever is in the room.

Synamedia Go’s AI also underpins personalised content discovery and filters preferences using natural language for conversational search on mobile devices while showing the results on the TV. Personalised viewing recommendations across TV and social are presented by an AI agent in a dynamic video customised for each viewer. Other products that contribute to the demo are Synamedia Gravity which monitors broadband performance and Synamedia ContentArmor for watermarking premium content to detect piracy, the company said.

In a separate demo, Synamedia Go addresses one of the industry’s key challenges: effective and efficient content discovery across all forms of content including live and the fast-growing short form. By layering in AI-powered personalisation, metadata and visuals, the demo shows how viewers can contextually and intuitively discover the content they want to watch while streaming service providers maximise their return on valuable content investments, the company said.

Complementing the Iris advertising platform, Synamedia will demonstrate how its dynamic ad insertion technology delivers powerful business and operational insights including measurable ROI for decision-making. It provides full visibility into advertising effectiveness, with new tools that analyse ad impressions and revenue by channel and device. Going further, it identifies untapped monetisation potential by tracking ad filler duration and quantifying monetisation loss caused by the ad ecosystem. This helps maximise ad yield and minimises revenue leakage. Its manifest manipulation technology also enables use cases including sports blackouts and channel origination for primary distribution.

 Synamedia will unveil the integration of ContentArmor forensic watermarking with the SaaS-based Quortex Play platform, making it easy for customers to watermark their live stream. By adding ContentArmor watermarking to live events and 24×7 channels, Quortex Play customers can easily identify the origin of leaks and take disruptive counter measures. ContentArmor does this by embedding imperceptible watermarks in the content to identify the individual accounts of unauthorised users and malicious actors. Another ContentArmor demo will show how it prevents CDN leeching. Synamedia will also introduce new Quortex Play dashboards that give customers insights into operational performance and monetisation for enhanced decision-making, the company reported.

In addition during IBC2025, Synamedia said it will demo how its AI agents and Large Language Models allow users to converse with its products using natural language to configure and optimise workflows. The implementation of a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for Quortex Link enables new interactions. Users can simply chat with Quortex Link to automatically monitor and orchestrate configurations. For example, if a user wants to configure a distribution link they can simply say ‘New York is playing tomorrow’ and the agent will suggest a configuration and, on user confirmation, will automatically set up the link. A user in France need only say “PSG joue demain soir”.

Another technology will demonstrate AI processing in a live video pipeline to identify sports events and enrich the stream with metadata on the fly, even at ultra-high speed with MOQ. The demo, with Synamedia partner Six Floor Solutions, automatically determines there is a basketball match in progress and detects elements including a foul, a three-point basket, etc. One of the Synamedia contributions to the new IETF’s MOQ protocol is a way to transport this AI metadata along the video stream for processing at the desired latency.

Synamedia will also preview its AI-powered video quality agent that automates encoder evaluation, allowing operators to improve quality, lower bitrate and cut operational costs. This replaces days of labor-intensive testing with automated quality measurement analysis, delivering results in minutes alongside continuous monitoring that flags issues before viewers notice. At the same time, it helps to lower CDN and storage costs by proposing smarter ABR ladders. The solution uses metrics including VMAF and is designed for an open, vendor-agnostic ecosystem. 

Information about Synamedia’s partners on display at IBC, is available here..  

LONDON—Pathé has selected Synamedia ContentArmor forensic watermaking to protect premium content on its Pathé Home D2C Transactional VOD (TVOD) streaming service in France by identifying the origin of leaks and taking disruptive countermeasures.

Pathé will safeguard its investment in thousands of movies, including 4K UHD content, across all devices while complying with content owner agreements.

“After evaluating the watermarking options available, we chose to partner with Synamedia because ContentArmor ensures we maintain the high levels of video quality that our users associate with our brand, as well as keeping a tight lid on encoding costs. Safeguarding the content of our partners is crucial for Pathé, and with ContentArmor, we are able to embed imperceptible watermarks in our content, identify the individual accounts of unauthorized users and malicious actors, and take action accordingly,” said Pathé head of platform and video Ivar van der Burg.

Synemedia said Pathé selected ContentArmor because it is well-regarded by Hollywood studios. It also offers the integration flexibility and cost effectiveness Pathé requires. Unlike other solutions that encode content multiple times to insert the watermark, ContentArmor only encodes content once, reducing both the complexity and cost of securing premium 4K UHD content, Synamedia said.

As a server-side solution, ContentArmor supports the highest security standards for session-based watermarking, ensuring robust protection for Pathé’s assets, the company said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

ATLANTA and LONDON—Synamedia today unveiled its Media Edge Gateway (MEG), an ATSC 3.0 software-based integrated receiver/decoder (IRD), with support for device security requirements specified by the ATSC 3.0 Security Authority (A3SA).

With MEG as a front-end device gateway, users can achieve cost savings of up to 80% when compared to a full system upgrade. The solution enables large broadcasters and station groups to take in over-the-air signals in one format, such as ATSC 3.0 or 1.0, and output in the other. Cable operators can use MEG to input ATSC 3.0 and output ATSC 1.0 in an existing facility. For remote monitoring needs, users can input over-the-air (OTA) signals and output IP, Synamedia said.

A3SA develops protocols for securing ATSC 3.0 services using IP-based encryption protocols, device certificates and rights management technology conforming to the ATSC 3.0 Security Standard. The device security approval process is a multi-party operational compliance effort, involving secure provisioning and thorough testing, it said.

“It’s been a privilege to work with innovators across the industry to bring secure, IP-based NextGen TV to life,” Joe St. Jean, managing director of A3SA, said. “Synamedia’s MEG makes it easier for broadcasters to meet content protection standards and supports broader adoption. It’s a strong contribution to the growing NextGen TV ecosystem.”

Synamedia purpose-built MEG as an all-in-one OTA, satellite and IP receiver. The solution can take in an ATSC 3.0/HEVC signal feed and output it as an ATSC 1.0/MPEG-2 signal, allowing users to prepare in advance for a full conversion to 3.0 streams, as well as robust remote monitoring, the company said.

“Security has always been at the heart of our business here at Synamedia, as has anticipating our customers’ future needs,” Elke Hungenaert, vice president of product management at Synamedia Video Network, said.

“When we originally launched MEG, it was one of the only IRDs on the market built with future proofing in mind because we knew the transition to ATSC 3.0 would be a marathon, not a sprint. These latest enhancements demonstrate our continued investment in our portfolio and we’re proud of the work we’ve done to support the ATSC 3.0 security ecosystem.”

More information is available on the company’s website.

LONDON—Tribal Ready has turned to Synamedia to assist it in offering ground-breaking video services to tribal communities across North America.

The collaboration with Synamedia leverages its Synamedia Senza platform, which will enable tribes to deliver hyper-localized content and TV applications to their communities, thereby improving access to vital information, cultural resources and educational opportunities, the company said.

Traditional infrastructure has limited the ability of Native American communities to connect with each other, share critical news and preserve their cultural heritage. With over 6 million Native Americans living outside of reservations, there’s a need for scalable, accessible communication tools.

Tribal Ready is expanding its offerings beyond broadband services to include video streaming to deliver both community-driven content and interactive applications to any screen connected to its broadband network, the company said.

The cloud-powered Senza video platform removes the financial and technological barriers that have traditionally hindered the growth of community-specific video services. By using the same web technologies that power today’s most accessible platforms, Senza enables Tribal Ready to consolidate local channels, deliver hyper-localized content and make community announcements without the need for expensive hardware or complex infrastructure, it said.

“We are committed to helping native communities thrive by removing barriers to digital equity,” said Joe Valandra, chairman and CEO of Tribal Ready. “This partnership with Synamedia brings us one step closer to ensuring that tribal members, no matter where they are, have access to the content and information that matter most. It’s about empowering tribes with the tools they need to stay connected, celebrate their culture and engage in the digital economy.”

Tribal Ready will be able to offer tribes a central platform for community communications, thus addressing the fragmentation of information across platforms and providing a unified destination for timely, reliable updates. The ability to run local ads on the platform presents an opportunity to support small businesses, creating new revenue streams that drive economic growth and support self-sufficiency in tribal communities, it said.

“By eliminating traditional barriers to TV services, we are enabling Tribal Ready to launch and maintain hyper-local TV experiences that strengthen community bonds and create opportunities for deeper engagement. Senza is transforming how content reaches our screens by eliminating traditional technology barriers and financial hurdles,” said Nick Thexton, executive vice president of media cloud services at Synamedia. “It’s an honor to help Tribal Ready deliver next-generation video services to its communities at a fraction of the cost of traditional TV.”

More information is available on the Synamedia and Tribal Ready websites.

LONDON—Synamedia has launched the Quortex Switch SaaS-based multi-CDN management tool designed to optimize streaming costs, quality and reliability. It will make its debut during the 2025 NAB Show, April 5-9, at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

The latest addition to the Quortex portfolio, Quortex Switch makes it easy to design multi-CDN systems to route end users dynamically to the best available sources. It eliminates the need for proprietary client-side code and enables seamless standards-based communication between the player and the content steering server to enable benefits like mid-stream switching across multiple CDNs for uninterrupted viewing, the company said.

A standalone solution, Quortex Switch supports any CDN from any provider, including Synamedia’s Fluid Edge private CDN. It puts an end to traditional CDN switching inefficiencies by enabling dynamic traffic balancing and intelligent content delivery, it said.

The tool enables configurable balancing rules for each audience segment, improving efficient traffic management and service reliability. Using it, content providers can streamline their delivery based on quality of experience (QoE) metrics by segmenting viewers based on factors like geographic location and assigning dedicated CDNs to certain audiences. This approach allows balancing decisions to be based on data and enables uninterrupted streaming and rapid disaster recovery when needed, it said.

Quortex Switch helps content providers reduce costs by using balancing decisions to manage CDN usage commitments and pricing differences. This prevents payment for unused capacity and unnecessary fees, it said.

The solution also makes streaming more sustainable and cost effective by allowing users to prioritize decisions based on energy usage, it said.

“Content providers tell us that scaling video delivery is the single biggest challenge they face, yet they still rely on inefficient proprietary software and complex custom integrations, as well as the use of inadequate protocols, such as DNS redirection,” said Julien Signes, executive vice president of video network at Synamedia. “By combining intelligent traffic management, real-time QoE insights provided by Mux, and sustainability-focused cost control, Quortex Switch delivers a more resilient, scalable streaming experience.”

See Synamedia at 2025 NAB Show booth W2243.

More information is available on the company’s website.

LONDON—Hearst Networks EMEA is working with Synamedia for cloud distribution of its linear channels, including The HISTORY Channel, the company said today.

Formerly A+E Networks EMEA, Hearst Networks EMEA will use Synamedia SaaS-based Quortex PowerVu as a fully managed service, a move that will cut costs and increase the reliability of distribution to 10 affiliates across EMEA, it said.

Hearst Networks selected Synamedia for Quortex PowerVu’s technology and the company’s Global Cloud Operations Center in Bangalore, India, which specializes in DevOps for maintaining and operating media workflows in the cloud. The network has confidence in the company’s dedicated team of engineers 24/7, full control and monitoring of content flows and end points and incident management, Synamedia said.

Synamedia’s SaaS-based Quortex PowerVu offers integrated disaster recovery and support for open standards, making it possible to add new channels and distribution partners in hours instead of days. The new service will go live later this year running on AWS, it said.

“We chose to partner with Synamedia because the company offered a risk-free way to move our distribution to the cloud and benefit from new levels of scalability and flexibility while cutting operating costs,” said Matt Westrup, chief technology officer at Hearst Networks EMEA. “When we assessed Synamedia’s CloudOps Center, we were impressed by the caliber of its services and found a perfect match for our business needs.”

More information is available on the company’s website.

ATLANTA and LONDON—Mexican telecommunications and broadcast company Televisa has selected Synamedia for an overhaul of its broadcast distribution.

The broadcast will deploy Synamedia’s Media Edge Gateway (MEG) and PowerVu across its network of 180 stations around Mexico to increase the agility of video distribution, processing and delivery, the company said.

By selecting Synamedia’s MEG, Televisa cut its hardware dependency in half, not only delivering cost benefits but also the modern technologies needed to future-proof its operations, it said. 

During the evaluation phase, Televisa used dozens of MEGs as a part of its strategy to broadcast the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022.  Synamedia managed backup channels and frame rate conversion. The success of the project contributed to Televisa’s ultimate decision to select Synamedia as its new software partner, it said.

“Not only did Synamedia build us a truly unique solution – one that doesn’t exist anywhere in the world – but it also demonstrated exactly what we desired in a partner: commitment to both innovation and our long-term success,” said William Aguirre, general manager of satellite operations at Televisa.

“Our internal team sourced our hardware provider Siselectron to provide a powerful SR1 device (2nd Gen AMD EPYC processor) and work on the customization for our specific needs. From there, we knew we wanted software and hardware partners agile enough to meet our present and future needs. Synamedia was quick to sign up and deliver and has been an instrumental part of the team, already demonstrating positive results. We’re thrilled with our choice.”

Synamedia’s MEG is a flexible, software-defined receiver with edge processing functions, such as transcoding, regionalization, time delay and blackout, across satellite, CDN and IP networks. The combination of Synamedia’s PowerVu distribution platform and MEG provides Televisa with secure content distribution, centralized control and edge processing to tailor content handoffs to meet the needs of affiliates and MVPDs. For Televisa, MEG helps ensure content is securely distributed due to Synamedia’s PowerVu conditional access, it said.

Earlier in April, one of Televisa’s largest stations went live with Synamedia MEG and PowerVu across Guadalaraja. The project will continue to roll out through summer 2024 and in stages for the next two years, to cover all stations in Mexico, the company said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

Like a science fiction novel where artificial intelligence is involved in everything people do, the 2024 NAB Show is seeing artificial intelligence, and in particular generative AI, assume a level of prominence that only highly disruptive, once-in-a-generation technologies like the rise of digital media or the internet can command. 

Separating some of the sci-fi hype surrounding AI from real long-term opportunities remains difficult, but nearly a dozen NAB Show exhibitors say there is little doubt that the real-world marriage between AI and data opens enormous opportunities for media companies with extensive consumer data and metadata-rich content libraries.

“ChatGPT and Gemini have revolutionized the world of generative text, and we expect to see similar disruptions in the video and audio generations using AI,” said Bibhas Kumar Samanta, head of sales, India and MENA at Interra Systems, which is showing AI-powered quality control and captioning solutions. “With newly released tools like OpenAI Sora, content creators will be able to produce short videos rapidly and more cost-effectively, which is especially relevant for ads, marketing and social media campaigns and will lead to new forms of content engagement and monetization.” 

Some of this builds on existing, very large businesses and is likely to only get bigger. The International Data Corp. (IDC) is now predicting that the worldwide AI software market will grow from $64 billion in 2022 to nearly $251 billion in 2027 and that generative AI platforms and applications will generate additional revenues of $55.7 billion in 2027.

“Many of the use cases that are being explored by our customers today involve applying generative AI to areas that already use some form of AI, such as monetization, upscaling, media supply chain and search,” said Chris Blandy, director of Strategy and Business Development for Media & Entertainment at Amazon Web Services (AWS). 

Carol Bettencourt, vice president of marketing, said Chyron will be demonstrating a number of products with AI features that greatly streamline workflows for graphics and live production. “We believe data is so important to the storytelling [and our solutions] that it has to be considered in our projects from the very start.”

“New AI solutions enable M&E companies to swiftly comprehend and act on data, which is an industry advantage and a necessity for optimized content production, management and monetization,” said Sean King, senior vice president at Veritone. The company is launching “Ask Veri,” a media intelligence tool designed to help users maximize the value of their content and data. 

The extensive data that broadcasters, studios, streamers and other media companies have relating to consumer behavior and the content they create, give the M&E industry a leg up when it comes to capitalizing on AI advances, but it also underlies some of the biggest challenges posed by AI. “The legal landscape in terms of content rights for generative AI is a minefield right now with a multitude of lawsuits having been filed against tech companies by artists and authors,” explained Camilla Powell, product manager at disguise.
Powell stresses, however, that the marriage of AI and data is already producing major advances in content creation. In addition to applications in editing, remote production and content personalization, the melding of data from cameras, LED walls, lenses and other components has produced improved AI tools for virtual production. “Instead of creating virtual production backdrops in weeks, teams can use AI to compose photorealistic nearly 3D backdrops in minutes,” she said. 

More specifically, a host of companies such as Chyron, Vizrt and Sony will be offering AI-powered tools for live production and sports. Sony, for example, will be showing the Sony AI Automated Production (Sony A2P) solution, said Alan Gagliardotto, senior product manager, Sony Electronics.

“Using AI and integrated data in our news and sports workflows means we can build graphics and the playout of stories quicker and easier,” said Steve Taylor, vice president, R&D at Vizrt, which will be showing Viz Engine and other solutions with AI features.

Other applications, which are too numerous to list, run the gamut from content creation and distribution to monetization and personalization for both consumers and operations. Elke Hungenaert, vice president of product management, video network at Synamedia, noted: “We’ve all heard of the benefits of AI for consumer experience, but what it can do for video service providers on the business side is equally game-changing,” offering them tools to improve video quality while delivering “video content more cost efficiently,” Hungenaert concluded.

Five AI Takeaways, Not Generated by AI

• The Marriage of AI and Data Fuels Innovation — “Data is the key foundation for the training of machine-learning platforms,” explains Steve Taylor, vice president, R&D at Vizrt. “The better the data … the more exciting the experience [that] can be provided to the viewer.” 
• Personalization — After years of struggling to offer more personalized advertising,  and content discovery, AI tools promise to make personalized media a reality. “In the future [in sports] you’ll see partner collaboration with different AI engines to personalize the fan experience,” said Alan Gagliardotto, senior product manager, Sony Electronics.
• Democratization of Production — AI is producing “more cost-effective virtual production than ever before, making the technology from Hollywood features [available] to indie productions,” said Camilla Powell, product manager at disguise. 
• Old Efficiencies Supercharged — AI applications promise to streamline existing applications for encoding, monitoring, quality control, bandwidth management, app development and other applications. “AI, machine learning and computer vision algorithms are all being used to automate practical content distribution tasks,” explained Mathieu Planche, CEO, Witbe, and in areas like app testing they have exponentially sped up processes. 
• AI Needs Humans — AI pioneer and Stanford Professor Fei-Fei Li’s adage that “AI is made by humans” and that “there is nothing artificial about it,” is also being taken to heart by companies who emphasize the importance of training people in the developing AI solutions. “You have to train people to use them properly,” said Carol Bettencourt, vice president of marketing, at Chyron who also stressed the importance of working with clients to further improve the tools.

Copyright NAB 2024.

ATLANTA and LONDON—Video software provider, Synamedia, has announced that it will debut its Media Edge Gateway mini (MEG.mini) at 2024 NAB Show. 

This latest addition to its SaaS-based B2B video distribution portfolio extends Quortex PowerVu and Quortex Link with a cost-effective solution to deliver small numbers of channels by using optimized, flexible software-based processing on low-cost platforms, the company reported. 

"There's an increasing sense of urgency for content providers to find new routes for video distribution to remain competitive and accelerate revenue," said Elke Hungenaert, vice president of product management, video network, Synamedia. "We have designed MEG.mini to address the main IP transition roadblock – cost – complemented by a choice of SaaS distribution solutions to meet all content providers' requirements with the elasticity and time to market advantages of the cloud. In addition, MEG.mini delivers the benefits of IP including lower costs, low latency, and the ease of adding new user experiences and monetization techniques."

In announcing the solution, Synamedia said that unlike traditional receivers that require large investments, Synamedia's MEG.mini cuts CapEx and is available with a full OpEx usage model. This unique approach gives content owners the agility and scalability to meet their changing business needs while cutting costs by up to 80%.

MEG.mini also offers a small form factor, low power, edge gateway for fast, secure distribution of small numbers of channel applications over satellite, IP and CDN. It eliminates the upfront CapEx costs of acquiring hundreds of servers and shortens time to market from months to days with off-the-shelf host platforms - removing the frustrations commonly associated with on-boarding and configuration. By miniaturizing its form factor and processing density, MEG.mini is an ideal solution for small numbers of channels or transport delivery with low energy requirements, the company said. 

MEG.mini complements the comprehensive edge reception and processing platform MEG, launched in 2020.  The other members of Synamedia's family of SaaS video distribution solutions are Quortex Link, for one-click cloud distribution of live content, and a full-service platform for primary distribution to affiliates with best-in-class viewing experiences and bandwidth efficiency. MEG.mini can be deployed standalone in a traditional CapEx model or as an OpEx software subscription with Quortex PowerVu or Quortex Link. Quortex PowerVu, a full-service platform for primary distribution to affiliates with best-in-class viewing experiences and bandwidth efficiency. MEG.mini can be deployed standalone in a traditional CapEx model or as an OpEx software subscription with Quortex PowerVu or Quortex Link.

Underpinned by Synamedia's proven virtualized Digital Content Manager (vDCM) technology, MEG and MEG.mini provide a cost-effective and flexible way to enter new markets or test new channels. Both benefit from Synamedia's technology breakthroughs that reduce the computing power needed to deliver, decode, and process content at the edge - the result of years of investment in vDCM. They feature integrated receiver decoders and support all distribution and processing functions from secure reception, through transcoding and decoding with grooming/multiplexing capabilities, to IP transport.

More information is available at https://www.synamedia.com/. 

LONDON—Scandinavian communications company and mobile network operator Telia Norway is deploying new optimization technology from Synamedia to reduce the cost of using the cloud for its Time-Shift TV (TSTV) and cloud-based digital recorder cDVR by up to 95%, Synamedia said today.

Developed with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Synamedia’s new technology is designed to change the way video is sent to and from the cloud, which dramatically cuts the cost of TSTV and cDVR services, the company said.

Telia went live with Synamedia’s cDVR recording solution in the third quarter of 2023 using a hybrid cloud model that includes AWS for common copy recordings. It also deployed Synamedia’s TSTV services for more than 200 channels in September 2023, using a hybrid mixture of on-premises and cloud services for control of live content, including restart and catch-up, it said.

“The combination of cloud expertise and technologies from Synamedia and AWS is formidable. With the development of these new optimization technologies, the team went far beyond our expectations to deliver results that don’t just simply illustrate how we are a trailblazer but will be the envy of the TV sector,” said Stein Ivar Nilsen, video acquisition and distribution manager at Telia.

More information is on the company’s website.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Monumental Sports Entertainment (MSE) will rely on Synamedia’s Video Network solutions to distribute sports and other content to its newly launched Monumental Sports Network.

MSE owns the broadcast rights to the NHL’s Washington Capitals, WNBA’s Washington Mystics and NBA’s Washington Wizards in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. The new network, which MSE recently acquired from Comcast/NBC Universal, is giving viewers a new way to watch their favorite teams and other related content, it said.

The sports entertainment company needed technology that it could quickly and accurately integrate into its media distribution platform to support its network launch plans. MSE ultimately selected Synamedia’s PowerVu technology for its primary distribution needs, based on Synamedia’s track record, the company said.

“We initially chose Synamedia for its proven solutions and established leadership in the market,” said Charlie Myers, chief technology officer at Monumental Sports. “But not only are they helping solve our challenges today, they are preparing us for future growth. As technology evolves, we’ll still be able to leverage Synamedia’s solution, as it’s fully compatible for IP distribution and its ease-of-use was incredibly important for our fast-paced growth plans. We are looking forward to exploring how both our new network and relationship with Synamedia will continue to evolve.”

The Synamedia PowerVu endpoint is designed to support High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) and UHD delivery over satellite and IP terrestrial content distribution networks. The technology is well-suited for network expansions, such as Monumental Sports Network undertaking, due to its flexibility and compatibility. It can be configured either as a single-stream receiver for decoding to baseband analog/digital video or as a multi-stream variant for bulk decryption and high-density transcoding applications, the company said.

“We’re thrilled to partner with MSE, a visionary sports organization, on their journey to expand the many ways they deliver exceptional viewing experiences to fans of the NHL’s Washington Capitals, NBA’s Washington Wizards and WNBA’s Washington Mystics games,” said Julien Signes, general manager, Video Network, at Synamedia. 

“The PowerVu technology is a no-brainer for regional sports broadcasting, as it prepares industry conglomerates for a smooth transition to the cloud and provides them with a trusted tool for expansion.”

More information is available on the company’s website. 

STAINES-UPON-THAMES, U.K.—Better viewing experiences, more subtle advertising, the slow fading of linear TV and better energy efficiency are among the trends to watch for next year, says Synamedia CTO Marc Baillavoine.

Technologists across all industries, including video streaming, will begin using artificial intelligence to transform their operations and the experience of consumers with their companies, says Baillavoine. Three years later, AI will have conquered ad personalization. 

“For example, by the 2027 Rugby World Cup ads will be less intrusive and super-targeted benefiting from AI-based dynamic ad insertion,” he says. “AI will analyze your viewing behavior to understand your tastes, habits and preferences. It will then insert personalized ads directly into your programming.” 

As a result, even the logos on the jerseys of players will reflect the brand preferences of viewing households and viewers.

Thanks to technology, ads will become more subtle yet more engaging next year. “We will see ads on the football field using technology overlays that are targeted to that exact user or household,” says Baillavoine. “You will see your favorite character snacking on the latest flavor of your favorite brand of chips while your neighbor will see theirs – all dynamically.”

Customization won’t just be the stuff of advertising in 2024. “Per-user, hyper-customization of content across platforms and devices will dominate demand,” he says. 

The same type of hyper-customization of content presented to YouTube and TikTok viewers will lead to a further diminishing of linear TV as Spotify-like TV experiences catering to the tastes of people replace appointment television, he says. 

“There are technologies available to make customization dynamic,” says Baillavoine. “If we look at what ‘just in time’ technologies like [Synamedia’s] Quortex Play and advanced CDNs can do, there’s no doubt that the technology is there. It’s now a matter of getting businesses on board with finding new routes to monetization that they may have previously disregarded out of fear of losing subscriber mindshare…”

Quortex Play also reflects what Baillavoine sees as another important trend for 2024: energy efficiency.

“In 2024, we will see the launch of more energy-efficient solutions, while not impacting viewer experience,” he says. “[The pursuit of energy savings] … led us to the development of Quortex Play just-in-time streaming. You use it when a viewer calls for content, and you turn it off when they… [are done]. The concept is simple, but the energy efficiency impact is massive.”

More information is available on the company’s website.

The applications may seem innocuous when they suggest new programs for you to watch, but content personalization/recommendation engines are truly powerful platforms that significantly benefit broadcasters and content distributors.

Case in point: ThinkAnalytics produces content personalization engines for Bell Canada, Crunchyroll, Tata, Liberty Global, SkyMexico and BritBox International, among others across 38 countries. Based on its presence on one billion devices serving 475 million people, ThinkAnalytics’ research has found that its content recommendations increase on-demand viewership up to 100%, boost the consumption of linear TV by 35% and increase the number of channels viewed by 30%.

“Content recommendation engines are all about placing the content in front of the subscriber in such a way that they’re going to act,” said Greg Riker, chief revenue officer with ThinkAnalytics in the U.K. “The key is making the viewing experience on that channel/platform interesting enough for them to continue to come back because they’re being served the content that they like to watch on an ongoing basis.”

How It Works
Content personalization is all about monitoring the types of content a given viewer chooses to watch—particularly when they do so for an entire series—and using the data accumulated during their viewing experiences to recommend similar kinds of content. 

“There are two ways that you can use personalization,” said Tony Jones, principal technologist with MediaKind, which offers its MediaFirst TV recommendation platform. “First, there’s video on demand, where content appears as a recommendation for viewers based on their preferences. Second is the creation of a ‘Custom Linear Channel.’ This involves creating a custom channel filled with content from the recommendation engine. It’s like a continuous channel specifically crafted for an individual user, eliminating the need to swap channels. It’s essentially a recommendation-driven playlist.”

To do all of this successfully, “video content recommendation engines leverage several data sets to suggest content by analyzing a user’s interests and viewing behavior,” said JT Taylor, product marketing lead with Synamedia; maker of Synamedia Go, a cloud-based video management platform that includes content recommendation modules. “There are several factors that these recommendations are based on—for example, the viewer’s search and watch history, and the content they have previously liked or shared among others.

 “By analyzing data, identifying patterns, and understanding viewer preferences, these engines, driven by algorithms developed with a combination of AI and research, offer personalized content recommendations that expand beyond surface level recommendations solely based on what someone has already watched,” Taylor continued. “They also enable viewers to discover new content that they might have otherwise overlooked.”

ThinkAnalytics refers to this concept as developing “taste profiles” that capture viewers’ program preferences in ways that can lead to successful content recommendations. 

It’s an in-depth process: “We do a lot of what we call ‘metadata enrichment’ to get much more granular on the ability to make good recommendations,” said Riker. “It’s not just that you’re watching a drama or a romcom or that you like this actor. We get much more detailed than that. It’s the ability to compare that taste profile against the rest of the catalog and then put similar content in front of this person so they continue to watch this channel.”

As the numbers from ThinkAnalytics demonstrate, content personalization can help keep viewers watching the same channel/platform more often. This reduces churn at a time of ever-fragmenting audiences due to increased content choice. 

Taylor concurs. “Ultimately, the synergy between personalized recommendations and content discovery increases user loyalty and leads to greater lifetime value for each user,” he said. 

From ThinkAnalytics’ standpoint, it’s about engagement, according to Riker.

“That’s really important, he said. “If you can begin to offer similar content and advertising to viewers, you can keep their engagement levels very high, and then you can go from there.” 

Privacy and Security Concerns
Although content personalization platforms do harvest viewership data, they do so in such a way that their identities remain anonymous and their personal information stays private.

“Privacy is paramount,” Jones said. “Personalization tools should ensure that individual users remain unidentified. A token-based system can ensure user or group anonymity. The design of personalization engines must prioritize the end consumer’s privacy.”

His view is endorsed by others in the industry. “Striking a balance between offering personalized content recommendations and respecting user privacy is crucial to ensure customer trust and maintain a positive relationship with users,” said Taylor. “As a responsible technology provider, we prioritize implementing robust data protection measures and providing transparency to address these privacy concerns and ensure a secure and enjoyable user experience for our customers.”

What’s Coming Next
With its ability to keep viewers engaged, content personalization/recommendation platforms are helping broadcasters and content distributors retain and grow their audiences today. 

As for the future? Taylor expects content recommendations to transcend video and encompass music, gaming and spoken word podcasts. 

“As well, content recommendations will incorporate real-time contextual information,” he said. “Factors like time of day, location, current mood, and trending topics will influence content suggestions. And content discovery will extend beyond traditional text-based to include voice-based recommendations, image recognition, and interactive interfaces.”

Artificial intelligence will play a more important role, with broadcasters and content providers working through AI platforms such as ChatGPT to provide recommendations based on users’ questions. “Whether it’s Discord or WhatsApp or Twitch, you can start to create these one-to-one relationships outside of the service providers’ own platforms, leveraging chatbots and generative AI to drive recommendations,” said Riker.

Whatever comes next, the primary goal for content personalization is enhancement, Jones concluded. “While current recommendation engines are better than random selections, there’s room for improvement in targeting content to users’ interests. The challenge lies in moving beyond simply relying on a user’s historical habits.” 

STAINES-UPON-THAMES, U.K.—Synamedia will feature the in-stadium fan experience with partner NativeWaves as the centerpiece of its NAB Show exhibit during the convention, April 15-19, in Las Vegas.

The presentation will examine how fans in their seats can replay the on-field action captured with different cameras in real-time as well as view stats on their 5G devices. This application features Synamedia Vivid compression, Vivid OTT, with ultra-low latency and fast channel zapping and secure delivery using Fluid EdgeCDN, the company said.

More broadly, Synamedia will focus on distribution and delivery of streaming content across the spectrum of sports—from local clubs to global events—with solutions for service providers seeking to stream sports at scale, move from satellite to IP distribution and deliver immersive in-stadium experiences 

Synamedia’s video network portfolio is designed to meet the needs of all types of video service providers from niche streamers through to tier-1 operators. At the show, Synamedia will unveil new branding for its video network offerings with Synamedia Quortex for its self-service, multi-tenant SaaS solutions; Synamedia Vivid for customizable, multi-cloud, single tenant solutions; and Synamedia Solid for virtualized software and video processing appliances, it said.

For OTT and pay-TV providers that need to scale services to millions of viewers, Synamedia will highlight many ways to overcome this challenge. Highly-efficient video delivery with Vivid OTT and Fluid EdgeCDN supports ultra-low latency applications for sports viewing experiences, such as watch parties and betting. Complementing this, Quortex Play (formerly Quortex IO) provides just-in-time live video streaming through a self-service SaaS solution that enables service creation in a few clicks and automatically scales cloud resources. 

For broadcasters facing the challenges of affiliate distribution to support the increasing number of live events, Synamedia will showcase its Vivid PowerVu and Quortex Link cloud-based solutions, the company said.

It will highlight how customers moving to IP-based distribution with Vivid PowerVu benefit from lower costs, improved reliability and new monetization opportunities with ad insertion, alongside broadcast-equivalent latency, it said.

At the show, Synamedia will unveil Quortex Link for one-click video distribution to reduce the time and investment needed to establish a video distribution link, it said.

The company also will present during the NAB Show program. On April 15, Synamedia’s distinguished engineer Dr. Gwendal Simon will present at the Broadcast Engineering and IT Conference. His session, “Traffic Peak Management in Efficiently Designed Telco-CDN,” will take place at 1:30 p.m. PDT.

See Synamedia at NAB Show booth W3927.

Registration for Simon’s presentation is available online.

More information is available on the company’s website. 

LONDON—Video software provider Synamedia has unveiled research on piracy covering seven countries that found comedy is the most pirated entertainment genre. 

Piracy was driven by such titles as “Ghostbusters: Afterlife”, and “Ted Lasso”, with half of all pirate viewers streaming comedy illegally. This is followed by the action and adventure genre, and the crime and thriller category respectively, the researchers reported. 

The study, conducted by Ampere Analysis, finds the value of entertainment piracy is three times bigger than sports piracy and that the fragmentation of rights across more services is now affecting piracy in the entertainment market as it has for sports.

If piracy was stopped, sports would create $9.8 billion in potential revenue in the seven surveyed markets, however this figure is dwarfed by the possibility of unlocking an additional $21.8 billion in revenue by converting movie and TV pirates to legal services, the researchers reported. 

The study covers the impact of sports and entertainment piracy across seven countries and the potential revenues that would result from converting pirate viewers to legal subscribers. 

“Unless the industry takes action, the fragmentation of premium content compounded by the current economic climate will continue to drive viewers to both paid and free piracy services,” explained Avigail Gutman, vice president of intelligence and security operations at Synamedia. “This represents a real risk to rights holders, broadcasters and streaming providers. As well as using tools and techniques to protect content and services, operators can counter the rise in piracy by ensuring content is easy to find and meeting consumers’ demands for mobile-first services, as well as more aggregated services and billing.”

The data shows that stopping piracy of a single Hollywood major movie release can trigger revenues of between $130m and $280m in the U.S. alone, with super-hero blockbusters offering the biggest opportunities. For a popular title like “Spider Man: No Way Home”, stopping piracy would lead to potential revenue for a studio streaming service of over $400m, based on the true annual lifetime value of streaming subscribers.

Of the seven countries surveyed, Synamedia’s report finds that the market with the most to gain is the US, with the potential of $13.7 billion in new revenue annually by stopping movie and TV piracy and an additional $5 billion related to sports. This would generate $5.9 billion in annual income for US streaming providers, with the 28 most heavily pirated movies and TV titles alone contributing up to $1.8 billion in new revenues.

According to the research, Germany, Italy and the UK have the lowest levels of piracy. But, by stopping piracy and converting pirate viewers to legal subscribers in the UK for example, video providers and content owners have the potential to unlock a whopping $1.36 billion for entertainment and $1.17 billion for sports annually, the companies said.

Football is the star sports piracy attraction and, despite being available on free-to-air TV, FIFA World Cup it is the most pirated league according to the findings. This reflects its popularity globally but indicates that even free content can suffer from piracy if fans are already using illegal sites to access other sports content. 

UEFA Champions League and the English Premier League are second and third respectively. The only non-football league in the top 10 is the NBA. After football, the most popular sports to watch on pirate services in the seven countries surveyed are cricket and kabaddi, driven by piracy in the Indian sub-continent, and badminton, driven by piracy in Asia, the researchers said. 

The study also found that pirate viewers using both free and paid for services are more likely to be male with paying pirates more likely to be to be men under 35 with young children. The research finds that 44% of affluent consumers pay to pirate live sports, despite most pirates falling into lower income groups, indicating a desire to cut costs and watch all the leagues in one place.

As fragmentation of content rights continues, the research finds that pirate viewers tend to be those who are most engaged with content. As consumers increase the number of legal subscriptions they have, they also become increasingly likely to watch pirate content with 91% of respondents who have access to five or more legal video subscription services have also watched illegal content.

“There is a persistent myth that the pirate consumer won’t pay and will never pay,” noted Guy Bisson, executive director and co-founder of Ampere Analysis: This research overturns this received wisdom, with more than half of all pirate viewers paying for pirate TV services and 54% also paying for legal services. We already knew sports piracy was a big-money issue, but what surprised us most about this study was the true scale of impact on the US major studios and Hollywood as a whole.”

Building on Synamedia’s research report into sports piracy in 2021, this survey involved 16,000 consumers in Brazil, Italy, India, Germany, Thailand, UK, and US.

Synamedia and Ampere Research will host a fireside chat, ‘No laughing matter: pirates enjoy comedy’ to discuss the findings in more depth on Tuesday 28th February 2023 at 4pm UK / 5pm CET / 11 am ET / 8 am PT. More information is available here. 

Most of us are taught to turn off the lights when we leave a room to preserve energy—and save money for that matter. We should consider thinking along those lines for a lot of different aspects of our lives, including video streaming. Why, you might ask? Because video will make up an eye-watering 82% of all internet traffic this year, according to Cisco’s Visual Network Indicator. With streaming services contributing a far higher carbon footprint than linear delivery, it’s time to find a more sustainable way to stream. 

With most matters relative to sustainability, there is no silver bullet, but we believe that with innovation and creative thinking that address the various elements of the streaming ecosystem, great improvements are on the horizon.

One approach that is gaining traction is architecting a completely new way of video delivery. The current just-in-case model is past its sell-by date. It requires that the video is processed for all the different possible flavors of an OTT stream—requiring multiple profiles, packaging and encryption—and then transported to sit in the CDN regardless of whether someone might watch it. It’s just like leaving the lights on in every room at home, regardless of where they might be needed.  

To address this waste, we need to turn the traditional push model on its head. Instead of "just-in-case," we need to pivot to a "just-in-time approach," which provides only the resources required to deliver a specific piece of video content at any given time when there is demand. So, if no one is watching a channel, it completely frees up resources—across CPU, network and storage—reducing energy usage significantly. 

As well as cutting CO2, just-in-time technology provides time-to-market and cost advantages over existing cloud approaches by ensuring that every deployed resource has a purpose. It also uses spot instances that take advantage of spare cloud capacity at a fraction of the typical operational cost, by load-balancing the current workload to an over-provisioned instance while the preemptive instance is drained. For example, for long tail content, just-in-time technology reduces cloud costs up to 67% according to Quortex. 

Seems like a no-brainer, but how is just-in-time streaming possible?
Synamedia Quortex’s multi-tenant SaaS patented technology builds video streams on-the-fly, based on the end users’ requirements, and matches to their locations, devices and time zones. It quickly adapts to fluctuating audience demand, unpredictable network traffic, and infrastructure context and limitations. It also automatically scales cloud resources up and down, while maintaining the best quality of experience. 

This means that video content is delivered only when and how a viewer wants it, and in premium quality.

Can you measure video streaming sustainability today?
The CO2 measurement of streaming has to consider the impact of each element required to deliver the stream including the CDN, the player, the viewing device, the transcoding, the cloud provider and others. This presents many challenges. Cloud providers, for example, are committed to using a significant amount of renewable energy in the future but are not providing exact figures on their consumption. 

At the same time, they want to have all available resources operating efficiently 24/7, which may sound like the opposite of saving energy when in fact, it’s this desire to operate at maximum efficiency that has led to cloud providers building custom cooling systems, automated scaling of physical resources and other technology improvements that will lead to greater energy conservation.  

For a deeper dive, let’s examine one part of the ecosystem—the CDN. There are several challenges when it comes to quantifying CDN energy usage. One of the factors to consider is how energy consumption of different technologies is measured, as there is no standard in the industry. 

Another factor is that in traditional environments, servers could be turned off to lower energy costs. However, now that servers that are shared internally (multi-tenancy) and externally (connected over the internet) they use a network that cannot be shut down. 

Lastly, some content is considered more essential than others and has to be prioritized. Natural disaster warnings, for example, are traditionally stored on an edge server. Other content, however, can be served up from the cache rather than downloaded every time it is needed, reducing infrastructure, energy and costs. However, the cache uses energy as well.

A greener future
“The cheapest and greenest energy is the energy we don’t use” according to Jürgen Fischer, Danfoss President of Climate Solutions. By moving from the traditional push model to a pull model with just-in-time processing, video delivery has the potential to consume less energy and cost less. Luckily, there are great organizations out there—such as Greening of Streaming—that are focused on helping create unified thinking around end-to-end energy efficiency in the streaming supply chain.

As we carry on turning off the lights when we leave a room, let’s continue to think of ways we can apply this philosophy to other areas of our lives—like with on-demand and just-in time video streaming—to conserve energy and cut costs, for a greener, brighter future. 

If you would like to read more about the facts and figures on energy for streaming, then check out this white paper.

LONDON— Caribbean sports channel SportsMax has deployed Synamedia's Vivid PowerVu Workflow-as-a-Service (WaaS) offering to migrate content distribution from on-premise to the cloud, Synamedia said today.

The move enables SportsMax to deliver a best-in-class viewing experience with premium picture quality, near-broadcast latency, distribution security and greater flexibility, it said.

SportsMax owns distribution rights for major international sports in the Caribbean. Among its offerings are the Olympic Games, NBA, La Liga, UEFA Champions & Europa Leagues, the Women's Tennis Association Tour, the Ashes cricket, Indian cricket, the Caribbean Premier League T20 cricket and athletics meets. 

"Synamedia has brought everything we needed and wanted in a SaaS solution to the table from the maintenance of our servers, operating systems and software, 24/7 operational oversight and monitoring of our systems, along with the ongoing availability of the newest technologies," said SportsMax chief operating officer Newton Robertson. 

SportsMax needed to update its broadcast distribution solution to deliver popular local leagues across the Caribbean region seamlessly. In a matter of days, Synamedia launched its Vivid distribution service in the cloud, replacing a legacy on-premise system.

By leveraging Vivid PowerVu, SportsMax accelerated time to market, gained much greater infrastructure flexibility and can now scale distribution instantly, the company said.

Synamedia's portfolio will enable SportsMax to evolve, improving quality and efficiency, as its business needs evolve, the company said.

"Sports channels are in a race to distribute content as quickly and as effectively as possible, all whilst maintaining a strong control of costs,” said Nick Meacham, CEO of SportsPro Media. “With SaaS cloud-based technologies, sports broadcasters such as SportsMax are able to maintain the agility, flexibility and scalability they need to ensure their investment into sports rights is a successful one."

Synamedia will show the full Vivid PowerVu portfolio at Stand 1450 at NAB New York, Oct. 19-20 at the Javits Center. 

LONDON—Synamedia today announced the acquisition of Quortex, a privately held company offering a cloud video delivery platform optimized for just-in-time live video processing. Financial details of the acquisition were not available. 

“By pioneering just-in-time video streaming processing and delivery, Quortex has broken new ground with live services that dynamically spring to life when processing a user request. This radical change in the economics of cloud processing will accelerate the migration of live video services to the cloud,” said Julien Signes, executive vice president and general manager at Synamedia.

The move positions Synamedia to enhance its cloud video network capabilities by complementing its VIVID Workflow-as-a-Service (WaaS) offering with OTT content processing, disaster recovery, long-tail content processing and live events, it said.

Quortex uses a pay-as-you-go-stream model. Its technology makes available the precise resources needed at any given time when processing video for streaming. The approach shortens time to market and offers cost advantages to user, Synamedia said.

For example, when used for long-tail content, the technology can reduce cloud costs up to 67%, it said.

Quortex’ multi-tenant SaaS technology builds video streams on-the-fly based on the requirements of end users and matched to viewers’ locations, devices and time zones. It adapts to unpredictable network, infrastructure and audiences and automatically scales cloud resources up and down, leveraging spot instances that take advantage of spare cloud capacity at a fraction of the typical cost while maintaining quality of experience, it said. 

The company, a founding member of the Greening of Streaming organization, which is dedicated to sharing best practices on maximizing efficiency, is well-positioned to contribute to Synamedia’s efforts to assist its customers in meeting CO2 reduction commitments, it said.

“With our breakthrough just-in-time approach, we have turned the live streaming model on its head, ditching the need to wastefully provision streaming resources just-in-case,” said Marc Baillavoine, CEO and founder of Quortex.

“We believe that with Synamedia’s global reach and complementary product lines, we can accelerate our mission to transform the agility and cost of streaming and slash its carbon footprint.”

More information is available on the Synamedia website.

LONDON—The video software provider Synamedia has acquired Utelly, a U.K.-based privately-owned content discovery platform provider with products focusing on the entertainment industry. 

Utelly's solution simplifies the complexity of users' content discovery across TV channels, on demand and multiple streaming services, the companies said. 

Its SaaS-based technology is already pre-integrated with the Synamedia Go video platform and will now be embedded in the Go.Aggregate add-on pack to make it easier for viewers to find content across TV and apps on any screen. Utelly's technology achieves this through metadata aggregation, intelligent asset linking, AI and machine learning.

"Every day we hear from customers that metadata aggregation is an obstacle that is negatively impacting viewer engagement,” explained Paul Segre, CEO of Synamedia. “Utelly was ahead of the curve in recognizing this and developing a SaaS solution that enables end users to find content across aggregated TV and video services. Its AI-powered solution eliminates the complexity of combining data from multiple metadata providers and is a great addition to our Synamedia Go streaming platform."

Utelly aggregates data in real-time from multiple metadata providers – pre-integrated with Gracenote, TiVo, IMDB, Netflix and 50 others. By unifying data and using AI to enrich sparse data sets, Utelly provides customers with search and recommendations that enhance viewers' content discovery experiences. The result is an increase in customers' Net Promoter Score (NPS), subscriber retention, and ARPU,  the companies said.

This acquisition strengthens the Synamedia Go offering and underlines a new phase of investment in Synamedia's portfolio of SaaS streaming solutions which also includes Synamedia Clarissa, Synamedia Iris, VIVID Workflow as a Service, and Synamedia OTT ServiceGuard.

"This acquisition is testament to the hard work and ingenuity of our tight knit team of developers who have put Utelly on the map,” said Romain Eude, Utelly founder and CEO. “We look forward to the next step in Utelly's journey as we become part of the Synamedia family and embrace the new opportunities on a global scale."

WASHINGTON—When the Howard (University) NextGen TV Broadcast Collaborative launched last week bringing NextGen TV service to the nation’s capital, the long list of ATSC 3.0 technology deployed to accomplish the feat included Synamedia’s vDCM multi-processing platform, the company has announced.

As reported by TVTech, WHUT-TV, the university’s owned-and-operated public broadcasting station, and four commercial stations, including WJLA, WUSA, WTTG and WRC, launched NextGen TV on Dec. 15. WHUT is hosting the 3.0 service. 

The Synamedia vDCM adds core functionality to the deployment with HEVC encoding, DASH packaging, statistical multiplexing and digital rights management (DRM) security. The vDCM is combined with key downstream components from Triveni Digital. Heartland Systems staged the deployment, Synamedia said.

The company also provided its MEG ATSC 3.0 receiver, a hybrid, software-based and cloud-native receiver that allows station operators to monitor 3.0 signals using custom dashboards, the company said.

“The success of this deployment demonstrates the power of partnerships. By bringing together experts in their respective fields, the Collaborative has taken a major step forward for NextGen TV in an influential market,” said Elke Hungenaert, vice president of product management at Synamedia. “It was a pleasure working with the incredible team to help bravely tackle this new industry standard in a new market.”

Howard University and Pearl TV launched the collaborative. WHUT is the first and only public broadcast television station owned and operated by a Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) institution of higher education.

“Synamedia played a crucial role in this important deployment in one of our nation’s largest media markets, further demonstrating the capabilities and benefits of this new generation of IP broadcast as well as broadband television enabled by ATSC 3.0,” said Dave Folsom, acting CTO of Pearl TV. “It is this level of functionality and features that will be key in showcasing NextGen TV to various government constituents, while also drawing consumers to adopt NextGen TV.”

More information is available on the company’s website.  

A few weeks ago I interviewed Nitsan Baider, director of product management for security solutions at Synamedia, about the company’s release of its new OTT ServiceGuard anti-piracy offering.

During the interview, Baider mentioned in passing the company’s team that gathered intelligence on pirates in its effort to help protect the content of clients from theft. That piqued my curiosity about what those anti-piracy efforts might entail.

To find out, I recently interviewed Avigail Gutman, vice president of intelligence and security operations at Synamedia. In this interview Gutman discusses how intelligence is gathered, involvement with law enforcement to go after pirates, working with competitors to advance common anti-piracy goals and whether or not the company has ever suffered cyberattacks at the hands of pirates or hackers out for revenge. 

(An edited transcript.)

TVTech: Since I spoke with Synamedia about OTT ServiceGuard a few weeks ago and the topic of tracking down pirate scripts came up, I’ve been thinking about what steps you might be taking to gather intelligence on pirates and the scripts they use to steal high-quality OTT content. Maybe you simply pay them to reveal their scripts and techniques. Maybe there’s some cloak and dagger going on, and you infiltrate these communities. Maybe you conduct some digital spying of your own. But that’s just my imagination talking; tell me what’s really going on.

Avigail Gutman: It’s probably all of those. When we gather intelligence about piracy and about hacking that leads to piracy, one of the important things to understand is that you're gathering intelligence about people who, on the one hand, don't want to be found. They’ll be hiding their activities or their conversations or their “Aha!” moments on breaking or exploiting.

On the other hand, these are people who need in terms of the hacker psyche, they want recognition for what they've done, and if they’re pirates, it’s a big business, so they need a sales outlet—whether it’s a sales point to sell a pirate subscription, stolen credentials or tools that enable you to parse a large database of stolen credentials. Or, maybe they want to sell scripts that enable you to break into a CDN and pull out video—maybe even strip it from DRM.

So, there's this constant tension within this ecosystem of both not wanting to be found but wanting to be exposed and to show off on the part of hackers and make money when it comes to piracy.

In that kind of environment, to find out what hackers and pirates are doing you have to employ a variety of methods to track them. So, yes, we do a lot of what you said. It’s a layered kind of approach.

TVTech: Tell me about those layers.

AG: At the very basic level, of course, we do internet research. We scour the internet. It’s known as web intelligence today, or open source intelligence. 

You scour the internet for discussions, tools and pirate services. You have to do this in multiple languages. We do that in 20 languages, so we cover the world. We go into open forums. So there's a lot of open source information available, but we also go into closed groups and chats.

Of course, we don't go in as Synamedia and nor do our competitors or other anti-piracy professionals in the field who also use similar techniques where you go in undercover and you participate in the discussions, not only listen to them. To do that, you need to see the world from a hacker’s perspective or from a pirate’s perspective. So you need to become educated in the content itself and the subject matter, but also in the way people speak. The types of things that people on these forums share or don't share. You don't want to be found out and thrown out.

That's the first layer. You do this across social networks; you do this on open and closed internet forums, and also on the dark web where there's a huge sales market for tools that enable piracy that might be in the gray area and therefore not available publicly. I mean, there's a lot that is available publicly.

TVTech: And the next level?

AG: Well, you asked, “Do you join the networks? Buy a subscription to the networks?” Yes, we have to. Not all of the news that we read on the internet is true. I always say it’s not the Harvard Law School Library. The reliability is not very high.

So you need to validate or verify or refute some of the information. Sometimes that means if you have early information on a new hack or piracy method, that you actually have to go out, purchase it and test it functionally.

Then if it works, do some forensics on it. Both because you want to understand how it works, so that you can create a technology to prevent it from working, but also to gather evidence, because clearly, this is something that facilitates infringement on copyright. 

TVTech: That gets to my next question. Do you work with law enforcement agencies?

AG: Absolutely. This is one of the reasons to do this. There’s really two reasons that we gather this intelligence in our business. One is for product improvement. The other is to go back to our customers and say, “Look, here are the pirates that we think are impacting you. Here is the intelligence we gathered on them.”

Oftentimes, we’ll make a recommendation and ask “Shall we go to law enforcement?” of they’ll say “We want to go to law enforcement with this.” At that stage, we have to turn the intelligence into evidence.

TVTech: What’s the reaction of law enforcement to video piracy?

AG: Law enforcement agencies are not preoccupied as a top priority with video piracy. They have to deal with street crime, but even in the cyber area there is what they consider to be much more serious cybercrimes—attacks on government, corporations and pedophilia. 

So, even if they do see piracy as cybercrime—and many countries do today, by the way—their resources are not there to do the investigation from scratch based on a complaint. So one of the things we do is bring in the evidence that we’ve gathered to support law enforcement activities. We do this all around the world.

There was big action in Brazil a couple of months ago. That was a very coordinated action by the government across several states to raid and arrest video pirates. We had been working with an anti-piracy organization there and with the government to gather intelligence about the pirates who ultimately were raided.

TVTech: Then do you step back and leave it to law enforcement to execute the raid?

AG: We often accompany the police during the raid. We’ve done this in Bulgaria, in the U.K., in Asia, in East Asia, in Thailand and elsewhere. We accompany the police because oftentimes we can see a certain technical setup by a pirate. Maybe the police officer’s instinct is immediately to seize the equipment, but if they disconnect it, they might lose evidence. Today, the police are much more sensitive and educated about this, but still we are there.

We’ve also been tasked by law enforcement and by our customers to do the forensics on some of the findings of these raids to turn it into evidence and maybe even give expert testimony if needed.

Some customers might decide they don’t want to go to the police because that’s a huge, one-year operation. But they want to send takedown notices to ISPs to take down content. We help with that.

TVTech: Synamedia isn’t the only company in the area of content protection. Is there cooperation among competitors when it comes to combatting piracy?

AG: Absolutely. First of all, there are anti-piracy organizations around the world. Some of them are regionally based. We’re members of all of them. So are our competitors, and so are our customers and other industry players.

As part of those organization, we engage in cross-industry, anti-piracy activities wherever there is no conflict of interest. There is a sense of camaraderie and cooperation, so yes, where there’s no conflict of interest I will certainly pick up the phone to my counterpart at a competitor and tell him about pirates we happen to run across that are targeting him, not just me. We’ll even take joint action in some cases. 

TVTech: What about retribution? Has Synamedia ever been attacked by a hacker or pirate who wants to settle a score?

AG: If we have, they haven’t done it successfully yet. Our customers worry about this as well. We, like anybody else or any other industry, work on the cybersecurity of our own organization. It’s not just pirates. You do this anyway with the surge in cyberattacks globally. Everybody is susceptible to this, and yes, we worry about it just like everybody else. Retribution is something we have to think about a lot.

LONDON—Synamedia today launched Synamedia OTT ServiceGuard, an anti-piracy solution for over-the-top services designed to protect them from an inherent weakness pirates can exploit to trick the service’s content delivery network (CDN) into giving out protected content.

“With the transition of the market into OTT, pirates have shifted their paradigm of stealing content as well as stealing service… and they’ve managed to find ways of doing it very effectively,” said Nitsan Baider, director of product management for security solutions at Synamedia, during an exclusive interview this week with TVTech.

Pirates have identified a way to steal content at the highest level of quality and also take whatever subtitles and audio tracks they desire without being detected, They can do this quickly and without the effort they previously had to expend, he said.

By using pirate scripts, they are able to connect to an OTT service, trick it into giving out the content, thereby doing away with the extensive steps they’ve previously taken to swipe content, he said.

“All that’s needed is a set of credentials, which are super easy and cheap to obtain, and you’re good to go,” he said.

These pirate scripts work because the OTT protocol is broken, he explained. “[E]veryone is focused on protecting the content and digital rights management. But DRM is not the issue,” he said.

The problem centers on the communications between OTT clients and services. Pirate scripts breach this communication and impersonate a client, said Baider.

This makes it easy for pirates to access content, enabling them to exploit vulnerabilities in the DRM, get to the control plane of the service provider, take whatever DRM licenses are needed and then, going to the CDN, obtain desired content and peel away the DRM, thereby completing the heist, he explained.

Another method is for pirates to reroute content from the service provider to their pirate clients. In this instance, a pirate server hacks the protocol and redirects those clients directly to the service provider’s CDN. In such a circumstance, a CDN may be servicing hundreds or even thousands of pirate clients on a single account and be completely unaware of what is happening, said Baider. 

Synamedia OTT ServiceGuard protects content across all platforms, including mobile, browsers and smart TVs, and extends service protection to the CDN itself, thereby stopping pirates from stealing content at the point of distribution, the company said.

The new solution gives each client a unique identity that cannot be cloned and allocates secure keys for signing service requests. This ensures all client messages are validated for authenticity and origin, it said. 

Synamedia OTT ServiceGuard is the latest layer of security in the company’s EverGuard portfolio. It is offered as a service and quick to deploy, the company said.

The offering supports all client devices and is easily integrated with existing OTT infrastructure without affecting user experience or existing application-service communications, the company said.

More information is available on the company's website. 

LONDON—Synamedia has achieved 8K real-time encoding and streaming without compromise using its VIVID Compression platform powered by AMD EPYC 7763 processors, one of the highest performance x86 server CPUs, the company announced.

Use of the AMD processors eliminates the need for screen splitting and other tricks that can compromise video quality. Synamedia built the compression algorithms involved to remove the need to make technology trade-offs, the company said.

Synamedia leverages the full codec toolset, powered by the AMD EPYC 7763 processors, to achieve this level of performance. There is no need to split the 8K signal into 4K quadrants nor a need for dedicated GPU memory or other hardware acceleration. Thus, issues with memory communications, throughput and local video quality variations are eliminated. These advancements and the use of Synamedia’s VIVID-AI Artificial Intelligence technology have produced a breakthrough in 8K video, the company said.

The company also has expanded its cloud-based video quality analysis to encompass 8K resolution. Video-Quality-as-Service (VQaaS) offers an objective measurement and subjective visualization analysis, which makes it simple to measure improvements in 8K video quality, it said.

Harnessing the power of 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors, Synamedia’s advanced compression algorithms offer operators and multiple video programming distributors (MVPDs) significant savings of capital and operational costs by reducing footprints and power consumption, while creating consumption-based business models based on VIVID Video Workflows-as-a-Service, it said.

“We are experiencing a technology shift here, combining our unique and one-of-a-kind compression algorithms, advanced video analytics, and proven expertise with the incredible speeds of the AMD EPYC 7763 processors. The flexibility of using one CPU without a single technological compromise allows us to provide our customers with the high-quality video content they expect from us. By combining our team’s expertise with the performance of AMD EPYC processors, we are able to bring more 8K content to the market at an affordable price to enable the 8K economy,” said Elke Hungenaert, vice president of product management at Synamedia.

More information is available on the company’s website. 

ATLANTA and LONDON—Synamedia has announced that the Fox Television Stations chose its technology solutions to support the rollout of its ATSC 3.0 deployment in the Orlando, Florida market. 

NextGen TV broadcasts were launched in Orlando on July 1. 

Together with partner Triveni Digital, Synamedia is helping enable Fox stations to launch new and better services, and generate new sources of revenue as business models evolve, Synamedia reported. 

In Orlando, the Fox owned and operated station WRBW serves as the ATSC 3.0 lighthouse to host infrastructure from other participating stations as part of the ATSC 3.0 lighthouse model.

Fox is using Synamedia's ATSC 3.0 Broadcast Solution, featuring its virtual Digital Content Manager (virtualized DCM) which provides MPEG-2, H.264 and HEVC encoding, transcoding, statistical multiplexing, splicing, advertisement insertion capabilities and other capabilities from ingest to playout.

"The rollout at our Orlando lighthouse station has gone very well, in large part thanks to Synamedia's proactive help and support," said Jeff Roberts, VP Engineering for WOFL and WRBW, FOX Television Stations. "We are quite happy with selecting Synamedia for this project."

Fox is also using Synamedia's Media Edge Gateway ATSC 3.0 Receiver which delivers professional, broadcast quality signal reception for monitoring and acceptance testing of ATSC 3.0 signals. 

The end-to-end workflow is complemented with Triveni Digital providing their GuideBuilder XM Transport Encoder for ROUTE/MMTP encapsulation, signaling and EPG generation. The Broadcast Gateway is utilized for final transmission signal preparation.

Synamedia and Triveni Digital are managing incoming streams at the lighthouse station to help ensure that the delivery of high quality content, such as a live sports event in 4K, will not disrupt the overall market's bandwidth usage. Synamedia's 24/7/365 support will monitor the overall workflows from its Technical Assistance Center (TAC) in Atlanta.

"This is an exciting time for our industry as the possibilities of ATSC 3.0 and NextGen TV are becoming a reality," said Julien Signès, general manager and senior vice president Video Network, Synamedia. "Synamedia brings a unique approach to advanced video capabilities through our VIVID Compression platform, particularly with our state-of-the-art statistical multiplexing solution, the result of more than 20 years of research. With such levels of precision, broadcasters can be assured that the right amount of bandwidth is assigned, frame by frame, to deliver equal and great quality at every point in the viewing experience. Fox would accept nothing less, and we're thrilled to support their efforts to bring it to market."

LONDON—Video software provider Synamedia has announced the acquisition of ContentArmor, an privately-held developer of forensic watermarking solutions for the media and entertainment industry.

Financial terms were not disclosed. 

In announcing the deal, Synamedia said that adding ContentArmor’s technology, patents and expertise to Synamedia’s broad portfolio of security offerings, including its Synamedia EverGuard anti-piracy services, would strengthen its offering with edge and 5G watermarking capabilities. 

This would improve Synamedia’s offerings for video service providers and boost Synamedia’s anti-piracy capabilities for movie studios and sports rights holders, across both OTT and direct-to-consumer services. 

The acquisition will also extend Synamedia’s reach into new markets including post-production, in-flight entertainment, and enterprise video, the company said. 

Edge watermarking is the most effective, secure and scalable approach for detecting and disrupting content leaks, and Synamedia anticipates a substantial market opportunity for it, particularly to stream premium content over 5G, it also noted. 

“ContentArmor’s expertise and investment in R&D has resulted in more than 30% growth year-on-year since its inception, along with an impressive patent portfolio,” explained Paul Segre, Synamedia CEO. “This acquisition further accelerates our industry-leading security business, with edge watermarking fueling new opportunities in the [direct to consumer] streaming space and for 5G. In the security domain, our clear objective is to meet the needs of all video service providers that care about anti-piracy. The acquisition of ContentArmor strengthens that proposition.”

ContentArmor’s forensic watermarking complies with the MovieLabs Enhanced Content Protection specification for premium VOD and UHD/4K, and is already in use protecting studios’ movies by identifying the source of any unauthorized content distribution. The company also has strong partnerships with industry heavyweights including Akamai, AWS, and Limelight.

Alain Durand, ContentArmor CEO, will join Synamedia’s senior leadership team to help shape its security roadmap.

The ContentArmor team will continue to be based in Rennes, France, which will form a new R&D hub for Synamedia’s industry security and video solutions.

LONDON—The cost of sports piracy has been revealed via a new report from Synamedia and Ampere Analysis, with as much as $28.3 billion in new revenue being available to service providers and rights holders each year if they are able to reduce sports piracy.

The report, “Pricing Piracy: The Value of Action,” uses a model that evaluates how different illegal viewers respond to anti-piracy measures and identifies the demographics and characteristics of those illegal users who are most likely to convert to legal services.

By understanding the motivations of those who access pirated streams, the report says that service providers can target those most likely to switch—aka “the converter cohort”—by implementing disrupting streams as well as providing them with incentives. Of more than 6,000 sports fans in 10 markets, Ampere found that 74% are willing to switch from illegal streams if a legitimate alternative is available and illegal streams become unreliable.

This converter cohort tends to be younger and is often families with young children, the report finds, with them watching as many as 10 or more different sports on connected devices. As many as 40% of the converter cohort would subscribe to OTT streaming sports services, while the remaining balance would opt for traditional pay-TV, particularly those offering exclusive sports rights. More than half of the converter cohort actually already pay for legitimate services (57%), while 52% pay for pirate services.

To convert pirate customers to legitimate services requires service providers to address the reasons that they sought illegal services out to begin with. Per the report, these include flexible access without complex installations or long contracts; ease of use; availability on every device in any location; and, for OTT services, a price point that is lower than traditional pay-TV services with premium sports tiers included.

If able to access this new revenue, Synamedia and Ampere estimate that of the $28.3 billion, about $22.9 billion would be split among pay-TV providers and $5.4 billion would be for OTT sports streaming services.

For more information, the full report can be downloaded here.

Q: What is SMPTE ST 2110, and how can broadcasters leverage the standard to efficiently transition to IP?
A: SMPTE ST 2110 enables separate, location-agnostic production flows for video, audio and data components/essences of traditional TV services, using an all-IP approach. The standard abolishes the requirement for two separate sets of switches—SDI switches for professional media and IP/Ethernet switches for general data—allowing facilities to rely on one common data center infrastructure. 

The transition to ST 2110 also entails the availability of Precision Time Protocol (PTP) time sources and, to support signals up to Ultra High Definition (UHD), requires 25 GbE or higher grade network interfaces.

For cost-effective transitions from SDI to IP, broadcasters can leverage SMPTE ST 2110 encapsulators, also known as “IP Media Gateways,” which provide IP encapsulation and decapsulation for video, audio and metadata, and provide dense solutions that typically come with custom FPGA-based designs. 

Media processing solutions further complement SMPTE ST 2110 environments by providing, along with a wide range of media processing functions, the SMPTE ST 2110 ingress and egress functions. There are also extensive diagnostic and monitoring tools to make the transition to media over IP as smooth as possible. 

Plus: What SMPTE-2110 Means for Broadcasters

What is PTP, and what is its role in broadcasters’ shift to IP-based infrastructure? 

PTP coordinates the timing for all audio, video and metadata packets, allowing for wide network system synchronization regardless of the physical location of the equipment itself. This concept enables Local Area Networks (LANs) to extend throughout a building, across a campus or between geographically separated environments for unprecedented flexibility and efficiency in distribution workflows.  

PTP time-based infrastructure and 25 GbE network interfaces, ideally with hardware timestamping, are required to facilitate the transition from SDI to IP. Broadcasters can leverage SMPTE ST 2110 receivers, which are synchronized to global PTP time sources, to help ensure packet timestamps corresponding to essence access units are matched up to accomplish highly accurate time alignment for all essences. 

What are potential challenges that can arise from the routing process, and how can they be overcome?

With PTP, packet loss and routing errors can be prevented with hitless merge redundancy provided by SMPTE 2022-7. Furthermore, existing ST 2110 solutions empower users to tune hitless merge reception via playout and synchronization delay parameters. Playout delay defines the buffer that is used to compensate for jitter and the window that is used for packet reordering. For hitless merge, this delay determines the buffer that can compensate for the delay between both paths. 

Broadcasters are increasingly seeing the benefits of migrating to IP infrastructures, and many will look to work with a vendor that can provide the right tools and expertise for leveraging SMPTE ST 2110 and PTP. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)/Radio Canada, for example, tapped Synamedia’s Video Network portfolio to assist with its transition from SDI to a SMPTE ST 2110 IP-based infrastructure. With the new standard, broadcasters will experience unprecedented agility, flexibility and efficiency in their content delivery workflows to provide optimized, infinite video experiences. 

Jovo Miskin is senior engineering manager for Synamedia. 

LONDON—A key strategy in the fight against sports piracy is to provide the right incentives to those illegally accessing content so that a legal service is their best option, according to a new report from Synamedia.

“Tackling Sports Piracy in an IP World” from Synamedia features research from Ampere Analysis and provides new strategies for sports rights owners and pay-TV providers to combat streaming piracy, as well as proposing how to bring sports fans to legal services.

There are two primary reasons that viewers become deterred from pirating sports streams, per the report—fear of disruption to their viewing and the risk of legal and social consequences; each answer was cited by 84% of pirate services users. The study also found that three-quarters of respondents already believe that sports piracy is morally wrong, but they still do it. 

One way to combat that is to make pirate streams unreliable through deterrents, including identifying, interrupting and taking down illegal services. This can include disrupting pirate services funding, which can unwittingly come from advertisers, or DNS providers and hosting services that Synamedia say “appear to turn a blind eye,” or online payment providers that process illegal transactions.

Another strategy is to provide viewers incentives that make the legal options easier and in some cases more affordable. Flexible pricing is one such strategy, with Synamedia citing NBA TV, which offers subscriptions plans for the season, a month, a game or just for audio commentary. There is also the method of offering a slightly delayed service for those unwilling to pay; French football Ligue 1 games are offered for free for near-real time streams.

Synamedia says that sports rights owners and rights buyers need to work in lockstep to combat piracy. Recommendations include rights owners being wary of agreeing to exclusive terms with operators that do not offer a viable multiscreen experience; they can also negotiate content protection into deals that allow licensees to recover some investment if levels of piracy in their market exceed defined limits.

“To remain financially viable in the face of the double whammy of COVID-19 and hyper-piracy, sports rights owners need to impose stricter contractual requirements on streaming services, while investing in their own monitoring, intelligence and automated take-downs,” said Simon Brydon, senior director, Sports Rights Anti-Piracy at Synamedia. “To quote one operator interviewed for this report, its ambition is to make IP sports piracy harder than selling fake designer handbags.”

The full “Tackling Sports Piracy in an IP World” report is available online. 

LONDON—Synamedia has introduced Iris, an addressable advertising solution for broadcasters, pay-TV operators, OTT services and hybrid service providers to leverage targeted advertising to unlock new revenue streams.

Iris can help organizations create compelling advertising propositions for advertisers wanting to reach specific TV audience segments of any size and makeup across all services, devices and screens, the company said.

“With Iris, the TV industry can finally combat the erosion of ad revenues to digital platforms and achieve its long-held ambition of generating new income from advanced TV advertising,” said Scott Kewley, vice president, Advanced Advertising and Data at Synamedia.

The end-to-end solution removes friction points encountered with piecemeal approaches, thereby delivering faster time to value, it said.

Iris supports unified campaign management as well as delivery to and measurement of multiple screens across apps and live, linear and catch-up services, overcoming one-way and hybrid broadcast-OTT challenges. This approach simplifies execution of plans and helps broadcasters and other video service providers merchandise their inventory more efficiently, minimize operational costs and boost income, the company said.

Iris uses data from multiple sources to gain sophisticated audience insights and anonymized household, user- and device-level profiles that can be checked against an advertiser’s desired characteristics, said Synamedia.

The new offering provides cross-platform ad measurement to exploit all forms of video inventory in a single campaign. 

“Our end-to-end solution with its unified campaign management capability makes it easy for customers to drive new revenues from their inventory—even over more challenging one-way and hybrid networks—and offer established and new advertisers an alternative to the increasingly wild west world of online advertising,” added Kewley.

More information is available on the company’s website.

MONTREAL—The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)/Radio-Canada has selected Synamedia’s video network portfolio for its transition from an SDI to IP-based infrastructure as part of its relocation to its new broadcast center in Montreal, the company announced.

CBC/Radio-Canada will rely on the company’s virtualized Digital Content Manager (DCM) in its SMPTE ST 2110 IP-based infrastructure, Synamedia’s PowerVu professional receiver (D9800) to enable the transition to next-generation distribution networks and the company’s Video Network Service Manager to configure, monitor and manage Synamedia’s array of  video network solutions, it said.

“This is a major achievement of [sic] us, given we managed to replace equipment that’s been in use for two decades,” said Synamedia product marketing manager Bart Van Daele. “This is really a major win.”

After a rigorous selection process, CBC/Radio-Canada chose Synamedia for its SMPTE ST 2110 upgrade to enable transfer of compressed and uncompressed video packets over IP without any loss in quality, the company said.

The Synamedia solution addresses the desire on the part of the CBC/Radio-Canada team for a partner with capabilities and expertise in encoding and transcoding, multiplexing, satellite receivers and decoders, and monitoring and network management, the company said.

“We’re thrilled to be CBC/Radio-Canada’s partner of choice in assisting with the broadcaster’s relocation and transition to IP-based infrastructure,” said Julien Signes, senior vice president and general manager, Video Network at Synamedia.

More information is available on the company’s website.  

LONDON—Video software provider Synamedia has announced that it is collaborating with Amazon Web Services in an effort to accelerate the adoption of cloud TV service worldwide.

Already, Synamedia’s Infinite cloud TV platform is being used by AWS’ Astro in Malaysia and E-Vision, a subsidiary of Etisalat Group, which operates a multicountry, multitenant OTT service.

Infinite is designed to allow video service providers to process, secure, distribute and monetize premium video across all devices, Synamedia says. The platform uses machine learning and AI to deliver a personalized TV experience.

Astro is utilizing Infinite to enhance its service to deliver premium video experiences to its subscribers across all devices. Subscribers can upgrade to new hybrid DTH and IP-enabled 4K UHD set-top boxes with a new UX and Synamedia Cloud DVR.

With E-Vision, the AWS platform currently live in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Infinite provides operators with a state-of-the-art platform to launch and run multiscreen OTT services.

Synamedia and AWS have also announced that they will host a webinar on June 10 at 10 a.m. ET titled “How to Build the New Pay-TV Bundle.” Registration is available online.

For more information, visit www.synamedia.com.  

LONDON—Sports fans want to catch all of the action so much that even while nearly all of them subscribe to a service that would offer sports content, more than half pirate content at least once a month, according to a new report released by Synamedia.

Synamedia’s “Charting Global Sports Piracy” report, which is based on a survey conducted by Ampere Analysis in 10 countries with 6,000 respondents, finds that 89% of sports fans have either a pay-TV or an OTT subscription service, yet 51% still pirate sports on a monthly basis. In addition, 42% of those who pirate sports content watch it on a daily basis, more than 60% higher than the average sports fan.

PLUS: ESPN: Fans Want Live Sports on TV to Return ASAP

Additional data found from the report also noted that 31% of those who watch illegal content regularly do so because the event they watch isn’t shown locally. Also, 29% of those using illegal sites and services paid for access. Overall, just 16% of online sports fans say they never watch via illegal sources.

The Synamedia report also classified respondents into three segments of fans and detailed their attitudes and behaviors regarding sports content.

The report found 26% of respondents were “Loyal Stalwarts,” who disproportionately are found in nations where soccer is popular. These fans often watch pay-TV sports and believe it is wrong to watch pirated sports content, yet 35% still do so at least weekly. However, they say they would upgrade their sports subscriptions if they could access more legitimate content at home and on the move.

“Fickle Superfans” made up 31% of respondents. These fans were primarily from developing markets and all consume pirated content, 89% of them doing it weekly. They say they might pay more for legitimate sports services if they could access more flexible packages, a broader range of sports or multiscreen services with flexible terms and frictionless onboarding.

The final, largest group is the “Casual Spectator” (43%). These respondents mostly only follow major sporting events like the Olympics or the Super Bowl. They are the least likely to pay for a legitimate sports TV subscription, while 17% watch illegal content on a weekly basis. They reportedly could be drawn away from pirate streams with “light” access to tournaments, flexible payment models and play-to-play access of big events.

“Global spend on TV sports rights is set to total almost $50 billion in 2020. Protecting these revenues and keeping sports on screens requires a deeper understanding of the evolving piracy landscape and a cogent response,” said Simon Brydon, senior director, Sports Rights Anti-Piracy at Synamedia. “This initial research into what motivates sports fans to access illegal streams establishes a baseline for a more nuanced and targeted approach to combatting piracy. Our ambition is to help sports rights holders and operators apply a more forensic approach that drives up legitimate revenues, reduces sports’ fans reliance on illegal streams and takes the wind out of the pirates’ sails.”

The complete “Charting Global Sports Piracy” report is available for download. 

LONDON & ATLANTA—Synamedia this week announced a partnership with Thomson Broadcast and Triveni Digital to offer an ATSC 3.0 channel-in-the-cloud solution to advance broadcasters’ uptake of NextGen TV, as well as a new professional ATSC 3.0 RF and IP receiver for MVPDs. 

“Our partnership was formed in response to broadcasters’ concerns over having to disrupt their current on-prem systems to trial ATSC 3.0,” said Elke Hungenaert, vice president of product management at Synamedia. “Our offering shows that a channel-in-the-cloud solution is readily available, while facilitating broadcast personnel to trial both operation and support of ATSC 3.0 with minimum disruption of their current on-prem systems.” 

The 3.0 channel-in-the-cloud solution will help stations looking to trial and deploy NextGen TV quickly and cost-effectively without disturbing 1.0 operations before buying ATSC 3.0 equipment for their facilities, Synamedia said.

“In addition, the channel-in-a-cloud system we built is demonstrable as a disaster recovery scenario, whereby switchover from on-prem to cloud-based infrastructure can be shown with less than a two-second disruption of the consumer signal,” said Hungenaert.

The companies bring their own unique technologies and expertise to the solution. Synamedia is drawing on its encoding and packaging capabilities from its video network portfolio; Triveni Digital on its GuideBuilder and Broadcast Gateway; and Thomson on its tower transmission products.

“The ability to trial ATSC 3.0 channels in the cloud will be a game changer for station operators in terms of capex savings, beginning with deployments of ATSC 3.0 lighthouse configurations using the cloud,” said Triveni Digital President and CEO Mark Simpson.

PLUS: NextGen TV Poised to Break Out in Big Way in 2020

The solution also makes it possible for broadcasters to benefit from the NextGen TV standard’s ability to transmit IP packets over the air and over the top. “‘Channel in the cloud’ enables broadcasters to synchronize and orchestrate over-the-air transmission and cloud applications with an ATSC 3.0 signal, enabling a compelling, interactive and immersive experience,” said Aby Alexander, president, USA, at Thomson Broadcast.

Synamedia’s new ATSC 3.0 receiver takes advantage of the company’s Media Edge Gateway software-based integrated receiver/decoder (IRD). The new receiver will allow cable operators to trial 3.0 signals and deploy NextGen TV on a smaller scale with cost efficiency and flexibility by selecting features at their own pace, Synamedia said.

Not only will the new receiver make it possible for cable operators to capitalize on the ATSC 3.0 market, it will act as a bridge between the IP-based NextGen TV standard and MPEG Transport Stream-based ATSC 1.0 standard by allowing them to receive signals from broadcasters correctly, the company said.

“The promised benefits of ATSC 3.0, including high-quality video and audio, cross-screen capabilities, targeted advertising and interactivity, are closer than ever to becoming a reality,” said Julien Signes, senior vice president and general manager, Video Network, at Synamedia. “Cable operators are well-positioned to augment the value of these new services, and the availability of an ATSC 3.0 receiver for MVPDs is the key to unlocking widespread adoption for ATSC 3.0,” he said.

In lieu of product demos that would have taken place at the cancelled 2020 NAB Show, Synamedia has placed video demos of its products online. 

More information is available on the Synamedia website. 

LONDON—Synamedia has announced a partnership with Google Cloud, expanding its video network portfolio with a new over-the-top (OTT) as-a-service offering.

The partnership, which enhances service availability and scalability, reduces latency often associated with OTT delivery of live events, such as sports, which can delay streamed content by a full minute as compared to traditional broadcast delivery, the company said.

The new partnership makes available to OTT streaming services and broadcasters the benefit of Google Cloud’s best-in-class low-latency network and Synamedia’s best-in-class low-latency live video delivery solution. Together they can deliver content with only 5 to 7 seconds of latency, which compares well with typical broadcast latency, Synamedia said.

“As the live TV landscape shifts toward OTT delivery, the industry needs technology that matches what viewers have become accustomed to with premium digital TV services,” said Julien Signes, senior vice president and general manager, Video Network at Synamedia. 

Synamedia will rely on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), an enterprise-grade platform for containerized applications, that will make it possible for users to scale as their requirements grow with an automation pipeline that can boost the media processing workflow in minutes and enable fast disaster recovery, the company said. 

The as-a-service video network offering unifies siloed workflows on a single platform, enabling seamless operations and faster deployment, it said.

The new partnership also brings the benefits of the companies’ artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to customers, making it possible for them to deliver better customer experiences. Intelligent pattern matching brings deep content awareness to media workflows, Synamedia added.  

More information is available on the Synamedia website.

LONDON—Nick Thexton has been appointed chief technology officer (CTO) at end-to-end streaming video solution provider Synamedia, the company announced.

Thexton, who previously worked at Cisco as vice president and CTO of the company’s Service Provider Video Software Solutions, NDS, U.L. broadcaster Channel 4 and Thames Television, will be responsible for Synamedia’s video platform engineering, product management and architecture and marketing.

“With his passion for innovation, Nick will instill new levels of creativity into our R&D activity to keep our customers one step ahead in a competitive sector,” said Yves Padrines, Synamedia CEO.

Alok Gera, who served as Synamedia’s CTO for the past 18 months, is taking on the role of senior vice president and general manager, North America, where he will focus on market-specific solutions for cable, telco and media customers. 

“Having spent years in R&D shaping many of the technologies that make up Synamedia’s portfolio, I have a deep affinity for the offerings and organization. My immediate focus will be an injection of ideas to support operators as they transition to IP broadcasting and develop new business opportunities. New initiatives will help video service providers win more eyeballs and build revenues in the IP era,” said Thexton.

More information is available on the company’s website. 

LAS VEGAS—The Phoenix Model Market Initiatives, a collaborative, single-market effort for the planning and implementation of NextGen TV technology, has a new compatriot in video software provider Synamedia.

Synamedia announced during CES 2020 that it has entered into a partnership with Pearl TV, which is helping to lead the Phoenix Model Market.

The basic goals of the Phoenix Model Market is to confirm TV service parameters and performance, determine consumer appeal of next-generation HDR video and immersive audio content, assess TV application features and implementation requirements, test interactive and addressable advertising functionality, determine consumer device and service appeal and ensure effective and efficient interoperability with MVPD systems.

As part of the effort now, Synamedia will provide encoding expertise and services. It will also build future ATSC 3.0 applications based on market needs.

“Synamedia has more than 30 years of industry experience delivering true end-to-end solutions, inclusive of and beyond encoding and transmission,” said Dave Longaker, senior vice president and general manager of the Americas at Synamedia. “Not only does this make our portfolio unique, it also highlights the vast expertise and support our team can bring to game-changing initiatives like the Phoenix Model Market.”

Synamedia will demonstrate its ATSC 3.0 systems at CSE 2020.

For a comprehensive source of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see ourATSC3 silo.

NEW YORK—Video software provider Synamedia and program guide and metadata management specialist Triveni Digital have announced a partnership to make seamless ATSC 3.0 transitions a reality for television broadcasters.

The collaboration aims to assist broadcasters that must maintain their existing ATSC 1.0 service while putting 3.0 on-air.

Triveni Digital’s Digital Broadcast Chain, which included GuideBuilder XM and Broadcast Gateway, supports a unified platform for a coherent workflow across both services, the companies said.

Synamedia’s compression technology and advanced solutions make it possible for broadcasters to repack existing ATSC 1.0 services and free up needed bandwidth to launch 3.0 services, they added.

Working together, the companies can equip broadcasters, content providers and service providers with tools to deliver best-in-class viewing experiences and at the same time meet their service requirements for image quality, bandwidth efficiency and transcoding and encoding for multiscreen distribution, they said.

“We were impressed with Synamedia’s track record of speed of deployment and uptime, both of which are key for ATSC 3.0 integration. These attributes, combined with their strong value proposition, made it an easy decision to work together on integrated comprehensive solutions” said Mark Simpson, president and CEO for Triveni Digital.

The collaboration is a particular boon to joint customers, especially those in the United States who can look to the companies to meet their 3.0 transition needs, he added.

“As the industry gears up for this major shift to increased broadcast capabilities with ATSC 3.0, combining the breadth of our portfolio and scale with a leading specialized vendor like Triveni will bring the best-of-breed solution to market more quickly,” said Julien Signes, SVP and GM of Video Network, Synamedia.

The companies also announced they have collaborated on deployment of solutions with a major U.S. TV production company.

See Synamedia at NAB Show New York booths N1143 and 1145.

See Triveni Digital at booth N1064.

For a comprehensive source of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see ourATSC3 silo.

NEW ORLEANS—Video software provider Synamedia has announced that it is augmenting its video network portfolio through a partnership with Telestream. The deal will integrate Telestream video-on-demand workflow products with Synamedia gear.

Several products from Telestream’s Vantage media processing platform will be offered by Synamedia. This includes the Vantage Transcode Multiscreen that automates multiscreen VOD workflows and speeds up the encoding process; Timed Text Flip for subtitle and caption editing; Vantage Array for scalability and redundancy; and Vantage Analysis for workflow decision-making and design.

The Telestream products will serve as a complement to gear from Synamedia like its Digital Content Manager, which supports linear TV broadcast and live streaming.

Synamedia will feature the latest from its video network portfolio during the SCTE-ISBE Cable-Tec Expo at booth 2311. The expo takes place from Oct. 1-3 in New Orleans.

LONDON—Cisco’s Service Provider Video Software Solutions (SPVSS) group has been rebranded Synamedia following the completion of its acquisition by equity investment group Permira.

The new company—which Cisco sold to Permira—holds a global portfolio of 590 patents, encompassing Cisco’s Infinite Video Platform, cloud digital video recording, video processing, video security and client software. Synamedia’s global team provides end-to-end video services to customers spanning advisory, delivery, implementation, training, system integration and customer support.

The company boasts a workforce of thousands located primarily in the US, UK, Israel, India, Belgium, China and Canada.

Customers include 200 pay-TV and media customers includes AT&T, Astro, beIN, Bharti Airtel, Charter, China DTH, Comcast, Cox, Disney, Foxtel, Get, Liberty Global, Oi, OSN, Rogers, Sky, Shaw, Tata Sky, Verizon, Viasat and Vodafone.

“While we are in a golden age of TV, our customers face challenges including the rising cost of content, soaring piracy levels, and the impact of large OTT challengers on the market. As an independent entity focused on this sector, we will help our customers optimize their current infrastructure and capitalize on OTT and IP distribution to expand consumer choice and convenience, secure their income and generate new revenue streams,” said Yves Padrines, CEO of Synamedia.

Industry veteran Dave Longaker has been tapped senior vice president and general manager, Americas. Longaker spent two years as Chief Revenue Officer for Rovi/TiVo, where he played a key role in merging TiVo with Rovi.

Permira Funds advisor Dr Abe Peled is chairman of the company.

After repurchasing Cisco’s Service Provider Video Software Solutions business for $1 billion in May, private equity firm Permira today announced a new name for the company, Synamedia, and said it has plans to introduce its executive team and roll out its strategy at the upcoming IBC show in Amsterdam.

Permira said its deal will close in the first half of Cisco’s 2019 fiscal year (we’re currently in the first quarter). According to the private equity firm, "Syna" means "together" in Greek, “reflecting Synamedia's ambition to bring together broadcast and OTT media services and enable clients to deliver exceptional customer experiences.”

The company will be led by Chairman Abe Peled, who was chief executive of NDS back in 2012, when Cisco acquired it for $5 billion and used it as the foundation to force it s Service Provider Software Solutions business. Yves Padrines, current VP of global service provider EMEA for Cisco, will serve as CEO.

Last month, Yvette Kanouff, the head of Cisco's Service Provider business, announced that she is leaving to start her "third career chapter.”

According to Permira, Synamedia will focus on empowering “telcos, media and pay-TV providers to optimize their current infrastructure and capitalize on OTT distribution to expand consumer choice and convenience, secure their revenue streams, and develop new offerings.”

At IBC, the company will be demoing enhancements to its VideoGuard anti-piracy service, a renewed investment into Evo middleware product, and a cloud DVR solution. Other demos will focus on Multicast Adaptive Big Rate streaming and broadcast-equivalent streaming latency.

"Synamedia enters the market at a time when the TV landscape is being redrawn,” Peled said in a statement. “Building on a 30-year heritage in the pay-TV industry, a market leadership position, and an unrivaled reputation for innovation, we will hit the ground running as a private, independent entity committed to help customers boost engagement and revenues by capitalizing on the myriad opportunities that IP distribution and cloud-based services bring.”

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