Enhanced TV design and deployment
Endurance's design and integration capability enables the delivery of Enhanced applications to Cable MSO customers.
The customer
Our customer is one of the Europe’s top communication and media groups and one of the largest cable companies with revenues of over £1.3B in 2001. The MSO provides TV (1.3M+ subscribers), entertainment, Internet and telephone (1.6M+ customers) services to both homes and businesses. The MSO has a state of the art broadband network, which passes 4.9m homes and 425,000 businesses.
Project overview
The customer required design and integration support in order to be able to launch its Enhanced TV (ETV) system. The ETV project needed to use Liberate’s and Two Way TV’s interactive software platforms to deliver interactive content over the MSO’s broadcast network. The MSO’s network provides highly advanced broadband communication with the capability to provide high-speed data and IP services. Combining a high-bandwidth two-way fibre-coaxial local network with an ultra-high capacity fibre-optic national network.
Endurance was engaged late in 2001 with the remit to provide the MSO with a working ETV solution in less than two months. Given the complexity of the system this was a most aggressive delivery timescale.
Solution
Endurance developed and implemented a Mediacast platform architecture supporting multiple channels across multiple multiplexes, including insertion of national ETV data into regional multiplexes and regional data into national multiplexes.
The ETV system was integrated into Liberate’s 1.2 interactive middleware for testing before launch. The scope included building a test system within the MSO’s Development Lab and proving the design through installation within the National Head End. The rollout initially supported BBC1, BBC2, ITV and Channel 4, however, the architecture is extensible to other channels.
Key platform technologies
Liberate’s 1.2 interactive middleware including Liberate’s Mediacast Server and Proxy Transcoder, TwoWayTV’s scheduler (ARC server) and listener (STB extender), the MSO’s Enhanced TV Gateway.
Results
The engagement involved a team of four Endurance consultants working closely with TwoWayTV, Liberate, the BBC and the Cable MSO. Despite the aggressive timescales the team delivered the fully operational system within the time allowed. ETV has been deployed nationwide and made available to all 1.3M of the MSO’s customers.
Endurance’s experience in large scale multi-vendor programme management, together with their well developed understanding of Liberate's platform software, helped the MSO to launch enhanced TV services in a timely, low risk manner.
The project has put the Cable MSO at the forefront of enhanced TV provisioning in the UK by allowing the creation of truly interactive TV shows and by opening the way for online voting, gambling and game play. The average revenue per household in 2001 was over £40 per month, the highest figure of any Cable operator in the UK.
The ETV project additionally has allowed content providers, such as the BBC and Channel 4, to deploy compelling applications that allow users to place bets on live sporting events, vote on issues discussed during TV shows and play along with live TV quiz shows, all using their existing MSO set-top boxes and remote control keypads.
Following a successful launch, Endurance were asked to assist the BBC with the deployment of their World Cup application onto the MSO’s network.
Endurance Technology: Enabling Digital TV
For more information, please contact Endurance.