Imagine Communications (Hall 7.G20) is moving to a future defined by IP, software-defined networks and workflows, TV Everywhere and multi-screen and virtualisation enabled by the cloud.
It is looking to help improve how media companies manage, deliver and monetise multiscreen content.
According to CEO Charlie Vogt, “We have invested significantly and innovated rapidly to deliver on our vision of leading the broadcast, OTT and service provider markets from the limitations of historically siloed, proprietary infrastructures to a scalable and much more flexible, service-oriented software architecture”.
Being an equipment vendor, Imagine is “heading to IBC with tangible demonstrations of virtualised, software-defined networks, solutions and workflows that will help solve our customers’ biggest challenges as they pursue unprecedented monetisation opportunities”, Vogt adds.
However he is keen to assure the security of existing investments by operators and of course his own company: “The industry’s move from traditional broadcast architectures will be a transition over time, however, and at IBC we will also be showcasing new advances that build on existing technologies while providing bridges to next-generation infrastructures, helping ensure that customers’ investments today aren’t stranded tomorrow”.
Vogt will take part in the conference’s opening Keynote “Assessing the Health of Broadcast TV” on September 11.
Imagine is moving its traditional baseband broadcast infrastructure offer to next-generation IP platforms with innovations designed to ease the technology transition between them. New processing solutions making their IBC debut include the Selenio X100 1RU processor, featuring a unique architecture with a path to IP and Ultra HD, and new modules for the Selenio MCP media convergence platform that enable high-performance JPEG2000 contribution encoding for live events and highly efficient satellite distribution via a dual-channel DVB-S/S2 demodulator.
Demonstrations will combine content originating from public and private clouds with on-ramps and off-ramps to bridge baseband video and IP; hybrid integration with on-premises playout systems to leverage existing investments; and seamless transformation for multi-platform delivery including TV Everywhere.
TV Everywhere requires efficient processing and delivery of content at scale. The SelenioNext adaptive bit rate (ABR) transcoder optimises space and power efficiency with up to 10 times the density of competing offerings, while SelenioFlex software-based media processing solutions, powered by Xenio, provide flexible live and file-based encoding and transcoding for applications from production to multiscreen distribution. The SelenioEdge content delivery network software provides scalable, cache-efficient streaming to end-user devices, enabling complete TV Everywhere processing and delivery workflows.
To deliver TV everywhere the network is fully virtualised. Software mapping the video bit flow across hybrid baseband and IP environments is provided by the MultiService SDN, software-defined networking framework.