Transcoding specialist ATEME has secured its first Middle East customer with the deployment of its TITAN platform in Saudi Arabia. Content aggregator Intigral undertook the project for both IPTV and OTT services in the Kingdom. Intigral chose ATEMEs TITAN carrier grade transcoding solution because of its support for both file-based and adaptive streaming video, and […]
Transcoding specialist ATEME has secured its first Middle East customer with the deployment of its TITAN platform in Saudi Arabia. Content aggregator Intigral undertook the project for both IPTV and OTT services in the Kingdom.
Intigral chose ATEMEs TITAN carrier grade transcoding solution because of its support for both file-based and adaptive streaming video, and ability to deliver video content at the highest possible quality to multiple screens. Intigral, a joint venture between Saudi Telecom Company (STC) and All Asia Networks (ASTRO), is a one-stop shop meeting all the content delivery needs of operators in the Middle East.
Intigral first deployed ATEMEs file transcoding software early in 2012, for delivering VOD to STCs IPTV customers in Saudi Arabia, but has now replaced that with TITAN to support OTT streaming as well.
The high performance and support from ATEME for the offline VOD transcoding made it clear that TITAN was the right choice for expanding into OTT streaming, according to Intigrals general manager for IPTV Operations and Technology Tony Saab.
It was a very good experience and ATEMEs support was perfect, said Saab. We were encouraged to upgrade our system with the TITAN.
Intigral is presently aggregating content at its operations centre in Dubai and then distributing it to STC over a 155 Mbps fibre link. This service will include IPTV, VOD and OTT, and is claimed to be one of the first cases where all three delivery technologies are integrated via a single transcoding platform.
Intigral presently has 20 TITAN nodes and plans to install more as the service expands, according to Saab.
Currently the platform serves 35,000 STC IPTV customers, but Intigral is aiming to have 70,000 by the end of 2012, and 200,000 to 300,000 by 2015. Intigral is planning to be an aggregator of content serving the wider Middle East region, as well as expanding in Saudi Arabia via OTT.
Apart from its support for both VOD and live streaming, Intigral selected TITAN for its flexibility and ability to meet all transcoding needs at different formats and bit rates, all with optimal video quality. Other important factors, particularly relevant for Intigral, were the ruggedized design ensuring high reliability in the field, and ability to manage Arabic subtitles for content in other languages such as English.
