HorizonSat expands broadcast and OTT media services with Cisco

LAS VEGAS, NAB – HorizonSat announced it is working to broaden the scope of its satellite and over-the-top (OTT) streaming video offerings with the Cisco^® Virtual Digital Content Manager.

HorizonSat, a leading satellite service provider covering the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Europe, offers media and TV broadcasting solutions ranging from TV distribution and contribution to fully managed playout and disaster recovery services.

The Cisco Virtual DCM extends Cisco’s industry-proven video processing capabilities from a set of virtualized video applications to deliver the highest picture quality to any codec and any screen across any network.

The deployment extends HorizonSat’s existing Cisco DCM platform with software-based HEVC statistical multiplexing (statmux) functionality, to deliver better picture quality while sparing bandwidth for its satellite distribution across the Middle East and North Africa.

With the Cisco Virtual DCM, HorizonSat can use less bandwidth to distribute more media content services faster over the Direct-to-Home (DTH) distribution network. The solution also provides HorizonSat with transcoding and digital content management for OTT streaming video delivery.

“Together with Cisco, we continue to build a strong, future-proof and flexible platform to enhance our TV broadcasting and streaming offering in the Middle East and North Africa,” said Subair Mullappilly, CTO, HorizonSat . “This software solution offered us a flexible approach to extend our existing digital headend platform and cost-effectively expand our OTT offerings.”

“Today’s digital video systems demand powerful, flexible solutions that allow content providers and service providers to rapidly deploy new experiences,” said Yves Padrines, vice president, Global Service Provider EMEAR, Cisco. “As part of Cisco’s Virtualized Video Processing (V2P) platform, our Virtual DCM software solution offers HorizonSat a significant reduction in costs by simplifying operations and management, while providing the foundation to expand into a unique hybrid delivery platform with adaptive bit rate (ABR) support.”

Cisco is building the simplified, automated and virtualized network platform of the future based on industry-leading software, systems, silicon and services. This enables service providers, media and web companies worldwide to reduce costs, speed time-to-market, secure their networks and sustain profitable growth.