Horse & Country TV has announce plans to deliver regionalised feeds to cable, satellite and IPTV operators using the cloud-based ‘Cloudport’ infrastructure run by Amagi Media Labs.
The Banglore-based broadcast distribution and playout company runs India’s largest local advertising network across 10 broadcast networks. It already has international deployments in Singapore and Africa.
Cloudport has been designed as a full featured alternative to traditional playout options such as satellite and fibre. It means that diverse language versions and subtitles can be included as well as local advertising and local programme insertion. The platform will shortly be upgraded to allow for the insertion of live programming.
Horse and Country TV CEO and chairman Heather Killen said: “Future-proofing our channel for multiplatform international distribution has been a key strategic goal for H&C as we expand our presence in new markets.”
Horse and Country TV is currently distributed in the UK and Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Malta.
Broadband TV Views. The move by Horse & Country TV to cloud-based channel play-out and delivery is remarkable, as this is the first time (at least the first we know of) an European channel, that will be played out remotely from India to distribution partners acrosss Europe and possibly other continents.
The trend was started by a channel like LandscapeHD, that is also delivered via the cloud rather than via satellite, fibre, microwave link or other traditional means of distribution.
Cloud delivery seems to be a very good choice for niche channels that want to deliver localised versions of their signals to operators without occuring enormous up-front distribution costs. Instead, cloud delivery offers pay-as-you go distribution lowering the treshold of market entry.
