In an important example of its international expansion, Elemental Technologies has announced that Columbus Communications Inc. will use Elemental Live for the encoding of content for its new multiscreen video services.
The privately-held Caribbean and Latin American telecommunications company, which offers digital cable television, broadband internet, digital landline telephony and corporate data services under the brand name, FLOW, plans to begin offering the expanded multi-platform video services in September.
In the initial roll-out, cable customers in such markets as Jamaica, Trinidad‚ Curacao and Grenada, will have access to live broadcast streams and an on-demand video library on PC, iPhone and iPad platforms.
In subsequent phases, support for hybrid set-top boxes and larger screen viewing will be added, the company reported.
As part of the deployment, Elemental Live will be used to encode more than 250 linear broadcast channels simultaneously, allowing subscribers to view live television broadcasts to internet-connected devices.
In addition, the cable operator will be using the Elemental Server solution to prepare thousands of hours of on-demand video content that can be accessed by authenticated users.
"Transcoding is a critical component of the architecture supporting our new multiscreen video services and Elemental is strategic to the deployment," said Darren Richer, chief technology officer at Columbus Communications. "The key differentiators that influenced our decision to work with Elemental versus competitors include overall video quality, high-performance software, system scalability, significant reduction in power consumption, a smaller hardware footprint, lower maintenance costs."
In a statement, Dan Marshall, senior VP of worldwide sales and service at Elemental Technologies also noted that "the linear multiscreen experience Columbus has created, providing live television streaming along with integrated services accessible across multiple devices, is truly a first within the industry and we're pleased to be part of it."
