Elemental Technologies is launching a video delivery platform that helps content owners and distributors add new time-shifted services, reduce distribution costs and more precisely manage content in multiscreen delivery deployments.
Elemental Delta is based on the company’s transcoding technology, and can be configured either as an edge server or an origin server.
Elemental Delta combines just-in-time (JIT) packaging, origin services, intelligent caching, dynamic ad insertion and replacement, and end-to-end encrypted content protection functions in a single platform.
As an edge server, it can perform just in time (JIT) packaging, apply DRM, and provide caching. As an origin server, it can apply filters, create manifests, and perform JIT packaging.
Filters are operator-defined, and can include just about anything – geolocation, time of day, identity of subscriber, etc.
The JIT approach saves costs in storage, inasmuch as it is not necessary to store each asset in multiple combinations of formats, size, and bit rate, explained Aslam Khader, chief product officer for Elemental. It also saves on bandwidth and transit costs, he noted.
“We show that Delta pays for itself in twelve months,” Khader said.
The company said that after extensive testing, initial customers include major telco, over-the-top TV (OTT), broadcast, satellite and mobile operators in the U.S., France, Qatar, the UK, Sweden, New Zealand and Brazil. The company did not identify any of those Delta customers, but Euan McLeod, director digital media technologies for Turner Broadcasting, spoke at the company’s IBC press event and said his company’s new CNNx service is being delivered with Delta.
Delta can be deployed running on 1RU COTS (commercial off the shelf) servers, as a virtual machine, or in the cloud, Khader said.
Elemental Delta supports multiscreen delivery of advanced live-to-VOD services such as:
Catch-up TV: Enabling viewers to replay TV shows broadcast hours or days earlier, catch-up TV allows pay TV operators to offer an alternative to on-demand movies and to monetize content through targeted advertising.
Start-over TV: Time-shift TV controls let viewers replay a live broadcast already underway from the beginning and to switch back to a real-time broadcast feed. Targeted advertising streamed on top of existing commercial breaks offers distributors a new monetization avenue.
nPVR: DVR controls, which enable creation and storage of live TV content recordings for playback on any device, are increasingly included as a component of pay TV subscriptions.
Unlike generalized multiscreen delivery services, Elemental Delta provides on-the-fly support for all major adaptive streaming protocols, compression formats, and multiple digital rights management (DRM) systems within a single framework, the company said.
Among supported protocols are HDS, HLS, Smooth Streaming and the MPEG-DASH standard, which supports on-demand, live and time-shift applications and services.
Elemental Delta handles H.264 delivery as well as the new high-efficiency video coding (HEVC/H.265) codec needed for next-generation video delivery. To secure content, the platform combines embedded encryption and decryption capabilities with JIT DRM wrapping, enables protected assets to be stored and moved efficiently through the network and applies DRM in real time upon delivery. Finally, Elemental Delta has built-in failover and redundancy, whether on the ground or in the cloud.
A complement to existing CDN topologies, Elemental Delta is based on Elemental’s software-defined video approach that allows video providers to run software across an optimal combination of dedicated and virtualized resources in private and public data centers.
