Enabling World Class Broadcasting

It's very clear... that the future of TV is interactive.
To be truly interactive, the viewer must be able to alter the viewing experience (e.g. choose which angle to watch a football match), or return information to the broadcaster (e.g. voting, shopping, betting etc). Interactive TV ("iTV") is about engaging with content (on the TV) not just the hardware (with which you physically engage). The response path is no longer confined to the remote control. In our connected world, the tablet, mobile device or even the viewer's gestures can act as a remote.
iab states that over the past year iTV experienced significant growth, with 75% of US TV households now exposed to some type of iTV advertising. That's over 200 million US consumers now able to use their TV remote to participate in what they are viewing. And Bank of America's "New Life for Television" study projects that by 2015, US iTV advertising revenue will reach $14 billion.
So the question is how to successfully turn spectators in to participants?
When new technology, such as iTV, is introduced to a wider audience, ease of use is often critical to acceptance and reliability key to its long-term success.
Three key pieces of technology are used in an interactive platform. First is a management platform that can organise and schedule all interactive campaigns. Second is the ability to measure the campaign responses and produce analytical data for future campaigns. Third is a response network that is able to process transactions, collate reports and send them back to the correct supplier.
Most importantly, the system that enables the broadcaster to monitor these disparate technical elements is the overall network management system. This will raise alarms if elements or services are not working correctly and ensure that iTV is available, reliable and always generating revenue.
Getting the very best results from your broadcast platform is one area of expertise offered by Astec.
Astec strives to improve the operational effectiveness for our broadcasting clients by delivering specialist monitoring and control solutions across the satellite, terrestrial, cable, broadband and IPTV industries.
iBroadcastTM is a multi-vendor network management system which provides a dynamic Supervision and Hypervision solution. It is capable of interfacing to equipment from 100s of different vendors and provides real-time alarms, trending, root cause analysis, equipment control, web-based reporting, off-air service monitoring and much, much more.
Our solutions monitor the entire broadcast platform, including ingest, MCR, archives, playout systems, interactive services, headends, uplinks, glue, IT infrastructure and 3rd party software.
iBroadcastTM is incredibly scalable and has been used to deliver systems monitoring 20,000+ individual devices and providing more than 100 operator terminals. It provides a single consolidated view of the entire broadcast platform and helps broadcasters increase uptime, reduce operational expenditure and improve quality of service.
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