Advanced Television

C4 selects Aspera for 4oD cloud transfer

February 24, 2015

4odAspera, an IBM company, has announced that Channel 4 has selected Aspera to enable the rapid and secure transfer of thousands of hours of video content to the cloud for its video-on-demand service, 4oD. Channel 4 has deployed Aspera On Demand, IBM’s cross cloud high-performance transfer platform, to significantly reduce the time it takes to transfer over 100 hours of new video content each week – amounting to 100 terabytes of data a year.

Available through 22 platforms, including set-top-box services Virgin Media and Sky catch up, mobile devices, PCs, connected TVs and game consoles, 4oD offers a variety of programmes recently shown on Channel 4’s linear channels, Channel 4, E4 and More4, as well as from its archives. Before investing in Aspera On Demand, Channel 4 was delivering content to 4oD via FTP, and wanted to find a way to improve their delivery to viewers.

“We decided that Aspera was a mature, fast, reliable and secure solution capable of handling the high volume of video content delivery direct to cloud storage,” said Simon Christie, Broadcast Systems Engineer, Distribution & Broadcast Technology, Channel 4. “The speed, efficiency and reliability that Aspera On Demand provides gives us confidence that every part of the package file is delivered on time and without corruption – which is crucial when we’re updating the platform with a hundred hours of content each week.”

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