Asia-Pacific Broadcasting (APB) July 2017 Volume 34, Issue 5 | Page 30

30 X-PLATFORM July 2017 New alliance to develop OTT broadcast service in Thailand According to Cobalt Digital, FAST-STREAM OTT is the first system of its kind to be able to insert data frame accurately into baseband video as prescribed in the SCTE specification. Cobalt Digital launches FAST-STREAM OTT platform Thaicom, Huawei Technologies (Thailand) and Starcor Media Technologies, are jointly developing an OTT platform in Thailand. Satellite operator Thaicom has signed a memorandum of under­ standing (MOU) with Huawei Technologies (Thailand) and Starcor Media Technologies, an end-to-end, over-the-top (OTT) and IPTV solutions provider, for the development of an OTT platform in Thailand. Under the new partnership, the companies will create “value-added services for the next-generation OTT platform for enterprise, edu­ cational, government and telecom sectors in Thailand”. According to the companies, they will work to develop content- rich OTT ecosystem services, in­ cluding TV streaming and video- on-demand (VoD). The creation of this joint OTT ecosystem, they added, will ben­ efit telecom operators in Thailand, who will be able to integrate the OTT services with their products and deliver their content to multi- screen devices such as smart TVs, smartphones, tablets and note­ books. For Huawei, the partnership with Thaicom and Starcor is an example of the company’s deter­ mination to champion OTT-as- a-service (OTTaaS) platform on a global scale in a big data and cloud era, revealed Robin Liu, director of enterprise business, Huawei Technologies (Thailand). He added: “Satellite technology serves as an enabler to unlock the digital ecosystem for new market opportunities such as OTT. Our goal is to equip our customers with the advanced industrial cloud and big data technologies, to provide a powerful, best-in-class OTTaaS platform, which combines fast speed and rich media resources with the renowned reliability of Thaicom’s satellite technology.” Under the MOU, Thaicom will provide the network connectivity and data centre services for Huawei and Starcor. Huawei will provide the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) — cloud computing that provides virtualised computing resources over the Internet, while Starcor will contribute the OTTaaS plat­ forms, and integrate third-party media and content management platforms. Cobalt Digital has announced the availability of its FAST-STREAM over-the-top (OTT) platform for frame-accurate SCTE trigger (FAST) insertion and enhanced H.264 OTT streaming. According to Cobalt Digital, FAST-STREAM OTT is the first system of its kind to be able to insert data frame accurately into baseband video as prescribed in the SCTE specification. Built with terrestrial over- the-air, direct-broadcast satellite, terrestrial cable/MSO, and OTT Internet streaming providers in mind, the FAST-STREAM OTT sys­ tem interfaces with automation and uses timestamps to insert SCTE 104 metadata frame accurately and deterministically into baseband SDI. It then performs high-quality H.264 encodes designed to meet sophisticated delivery require­ ments in real time. More importantly, during the compressi