Fiber-to-the-home service provider Total Vision has partnered with Kasenna Inc. to roll out video-on-demand service to about 65,000 condo units along the Gulf Coast.
Total Vision, which offers broadband services in parts of Alabama, Mississippi and Florida, is deploying Kasenna’s line of media servers and baseline “XMP” software to support its VOD platform.
Taking a distributed approach, Total Vision will centralize some VOD content on Kasenna’s “SpeedBase” servers and offer more popular titles via its “OmniBase” edge servers, which will be installed in the basement of each high-rise building. Kasenna’s software uses an algorithm that determines which titles are the most popular and distributes assets accordingly.
That architecture will allow Total Vision to offer VOD “a lot less expensively and to [provide] fault tolerance all over the network,” said Kasenna President and CEO Mark Gray.
Kasenna initially will provide enough capacity for about 4,700 streams for the first 80 buildings, though the streaming count and number of VOD-enabled buildings could double over the next year, Gray said. The IP-based VOD system, expected to be up and running by August 1, will be coupled with cigarette-box-sized set-tops from U.K.-based Amino Communications.
Kasenna, which says it has deployed more than 3,000 servers so far, has sold several similar systems in Asia, but the concept is just now starting to catch on in the U.S., Gray said.
Kasenna also has eyes for the U.S. VOD cable market. Mid-Hudson Cablevision is using Kasenna servers and backoffice software from N2 Broadband to support a VOD trial in Catskill, N.Y.