Advanced Television

Trace brings urban music to the world with Media Excel HERO encoders

September 14, 2017

here may not be an ‘I’ in team, but there must be a number three in their somewhere — the cooperative approach to problem solving by three digital-solutions industry leaders proves it. Since 2014, Simplestream, a leading provider of video services for the media and entertainment industry, has been working with the experts at digital video solutions provider Garland and multi-screen encoder/transcoder provider Media Excel to expand their offerings to their customers.

Simplestream provides OTT Live and VoD streaming solutions, including fully automated catch-up services for desktop, mobile, tablet and TV. They have a diverse customer base, which includes shopping channels, horse racing, gaming, sport, news and entertainment. Ever the innovator, at IBC 2017 in Amsterdam running from 15-19 September, they will be unveiling their enhanced suite of modular cloud-based solutions, including the official launch of “VOD-in-a-Box”, Network PVR and enhanced live video editor (you can find them on stand #14.D11).

Media Excel’s product line has been developed in line with the needs of Simplestream’s customers and their own white label live, on demand and catch-up offering.  Earlier this year, Garland supplied Simplestream with Media Excel HERO 1RU platforms with the HERO Management System running in the cloud. Each HERO is running five services that are encoded in adaptive bitrates and in multiple formats.

In turn, Simplestream was able to assist urban music and entertainment company, Trace, in building its new SVoD, live TV and radio offering called TracePlay. In less than 12 week, Simplestream had completed the project, which includes content ingest, transcoding and service management.

Trace, based in Paris, offers direct and live access to 10 music and sports TV channels, 31 FM and digital urban music radio stations, and a selection of urban TV series, films and documentaries. Its audience spawns across 80 countries —  from Africa to Europe, the United States, the Caribbean and Indian Ocean — and is scheduled to expand to 200 countries.

  “We saw many advantages to this encoding platform,” says Lorna Garrett, Commercial Director at Garland. “Not only does it offer a wide set of features, but it is an excellent means to future proof through the use of HEVC encoding and 4K/UHD.” 

“TracePlay is a great example of a truly global offering: it is multi-device, multi-lingual and it appeals to a huge audience in more than 200 countries,” says Dan Finch, Chief Commercial Officer of Simplestream. “By working together with Garland, Media Excel and our customer on such a highly complex project, we were able to provide the needed solution fast, as well as the support needed. In turn, we all were able to grow our offerings and our expertise.”

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