Malaysian media group Media Prima Berhad is using a complete range of Digital Rapids systems to power Catch-Up TV, their new online TV-on-demand service. Catch-Up TV enables Web users to view previously-broadcast programs from Media Prima's four television networks — TV3, ntv7, 8TV and TV9 – online, enabling viewers to watch current and classic programming on demand at high quality.
Designed by Digital Rapids and installed by systems integrator Graphics Vision, the Media Prima Catch-Up TV workflow includes a full complement of Digital Rapids solutions including StreamZ media encoding servers equipped with Studio AVC encoders; Broadcast Manager enterprise-level encoder management software for managing centralized control, scheduling and fault tolerance for the StreamZ systems; Transcode Manager for the automated transcoding of file-based source material to H.264 and Adobe Flash formats for archiving and distribution; and Digital Rapids Copper data delivery software for reliable transfer of finished on-demand media files from Media Prima to Limelight Networks, the content delivery network used for delivering the content to Media Prima's viewers. StreamP portable streaming media encoders are used on a laptop for encoding remote on-location feeds, and transferring them back to headquarters using Copper to overcome the performance limitations of remote networks
Shows will be available free on Catch-Up TV online within no more than 12 hours of their original broadcast, and after one week will be moved into the archive library for fee-based viewing. Original content including Internet exclusives, behind-the-scenes footage, bloopers and contests will also be available to Web viewers.
"To meet our goal of becoming the online TV destination of choice for Malaysians, it was critical for us to carefully choose solutions that would enable us to deliver a high-quality experience to our audience with high reliability," said Paul Moss, General Manager for Network Media Portals at Media Prima. "Digital Rapids solutions not only met these criteria, but their ability to work seamlessly together in a complete workflow from encoding through delivery made them the ideal choice for this project. I'm happy to say that we already have online delivery down to four hours after a program's on-air transmission."
"With Catch-Up TV, Media Prima is taking excellent advantage of the growing new media distribution opportunities offered by the Internet, and we're very pleased to be working with Media Prima to deliver top-quality content to their viewers," said Brick Eksten, President of Digital Rapids Corporation.
