MAGIO Magic: Info-Channel Wizardry

Just as a magician pulls rabbits from a hat, so MAGIO TV and Kabel Plus s.r.o. can now pull new TV channels from out of the cloud. What is the source of their wizardry? Stream Circle; need you ask?

In the 21st century, every television network, terrestrial multiplex, or even a hotel TV service can benefit considerably from an info-channel giving details of their programming portfolio, events, advertisements and useful information. The technological basis for such a facility used to be quite complicated, requiring considerable equipment, personnel and capital expenditure. Today, through the magic of cloud-based playout, multi-channel expansion can be facilitated via the internet using a very sophisticated, but easy-to-use software solution which requires minimum personnel and no capex.

As an example of this progress, we can offer you MAGIO TV, a division of Slovak Telekom, who required Kabel Plus company an info-channel with a completely fresh, modern and technologically super-reliable IP playout solution (see the enclosed picture example of their output). Their content requirements included: flexibility to deliver different feeds; a reliable playout solution with backup; effective playout with attractive graphics; shorter time for scheduling; consistent workflows and the possibility to combine videos with live inputs. Technical parameters included: the ability to ingest multiple original video formats; a facility for delivering CBR (Constant Bit Rate) output; the capacity to combine several live inputs with video files; the display of secondary graphics from dynamic playlist information; VFX, 3D and DVE effects; support for all standard video output formats and HW interfaces; 24 x 7 x 365 playout management and detailed monitoring; simple to adopt workflow for internal operation teams and an HD playout system with complete system redundancy.

Of course, MAGIO TV were searching for a solution which would not only cover all of these requirements but would also be efficient, simple to use and financially affordable. As we hinted at the beginning, for the optimum playout service, they chose the Stream Circle platform and Kabel Plus as the content provider. And they were not disappointed as the implementation, including their unique requirements, took only four weeks. As Ms. Zdenka Hopjakova, Project manager at Stream Circle further explains: "Thanks to our partnership with Kabel Plus we were able to address all MAGIO needs. The implementation also covered interfaces with the Teracue Encoder and distribution headends as well as ensuring continual monitoring of the quality of the output by the Stream Expert solution. The installation comprised setups of playout servers at the headends; configuration of client's graphics, the ingest server, the playout application and the monitoring tools; and, last but not least, user training of MAGIO TV info channel operators. Thanks to Stream Circle, Kabel Plus has enriched Slovak Telekom programme portfolio by another TV channel, through which, Slovak Telekom has the ability to spread more information about their television channels to a broader spectrum of viewers."

Stream Circle is a fast developing and feature-rich service for IP playout automation. As a cloud service, it is easily accessible from any location and device, robust and resilient, as well as highly flexible to satisfy any online TV channel needs and expectations. The mysteries of magic are becoming more and more common place thanks to the wizardry of Stream Circle's software developers.

Article by Martin Junek.

www.streamcircle.com

This article is also available to read at BFV online here, page 24.

(JP/LM)