IBC2014: Harmonic Brings Multiscreen Stream Packaging and Delivery to VOS Platform

SAN JOSE, CALIF. — Harmonic announced new multiscreen packaging and origination capabilities for its VOS software-based media processing platform. Unifying the entire broadcast and multiscreen media processing chain, VOS now includes packaging-on-the-fly and low-latency origin server functionalities originally developed for Harmonic’s ProMedia family of integrated multiscreen applications, as well as a range of broadcast-quality captioning and subtitling, ad insertion, and blackout support for live, VOD, and time-shift services. The VOS platform combines ingest, compression, graphics and branding, packaging, and delivery on common, off-the-shelf hardware.

Sky Italia, the Italian pay-TV provider, is one of the first customers to deploy the VOS platform for its broadcast and multiscreen services.

“In today’s fast-paced, constantly evolving multiscreen world, the survival of service providers depends on their ability to launch new services ahead of the competition,” said Massimo Bertolotti, head of innovation and multimedia distribution, Sky Italia. “Harmonic’s VOS media processing platform with transcoding and stream packaging capabilities dramatically reduces our costs and complexity by consolidating the number of discrete appliances required to produce and deliver high-quality multiscreen video content, while providing us with the scalability to grow. We now have the agility to launch additional channels and services faster and cheaper with amazing video quality.”

The new multiscreen capabilities are available in Harmonic’s VOS-powered ProMedia X Origin streaming media server. ProMedia X Origin supports a broad range of applications beyond live streaming and video on demand. When combined with Harmonic’s MediaGrid shared storage system, ProMedia X Origin provides a complete time-shift TV solution, including catch-up TV, start-over TV, and nDVR.