M+E Daily

One year after announcing their partnership, Deluxe Entertainment Services Group Inc. (Deluxe) and Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) have successfully delivered – ahead of schedule – the first software-defined TV channel in Asia Pacific. Deluxe will showcase its software-defined playout capability and more at NAB 2016 in Las Vegas, NV, in booth #SU4414. This transition, driven by SBS and enabled by Deluxe’s innovative software-defined broadcast platform, MediaCloud, has allowed SBS to greatly accelerate its channel launch plans, gain significant operational efficiencies and optimize the value of its broadcast operation.

With the success of the World Movies and NITV channel launches, and SBS’s recently launched fourth free-to-air TV channel Food Network onto the MediaCloud system, SBS plans to transition across its remaining channels – SBS and SBS 2, to the Deluxe MediaCloud platform this year.

Noel Leslie, SBS Chief Technology Officer, said, “SBS is the first Australian media company to evolve to digital software-defined playout of its television channels harnessing new technology to transform and enhance the business.”

“The flexibility of a software-defined platform like Deluxe MediaCloud allows us greater agility and efficiencies as we continue to deliver great services, on Charter, with significantly less funding than other broadcasters. Having the infrastructure managed externally allows us the ability to be able to launch a complete channel from scratch with greater speed and agility then we ever could before.”

The goal of this forward-thinking initiative, part of an ongoing Deluxe contract to manage SBS’s playout operations, is to deliver an agile, resilient and futureproof workflow to give SBS complete visibility and control over all of its media content. The move from a capex-based legacy hardware infrastructure to a flexible and more cost-effective opex-based software-defined playout system was key.

Leslie continued, “SBS is leading the way in Australia with this transformation and with such a fundamental shift in operational and working practices, we were careful to plan a staged transition to the software-defined environment. We are absolutely delighted by the speed and ease of the transition, so much so that we were able to launch channels onto the platform earlier than planned.”

Deluxe MediaCloud CTO Alec Stichbury said, “We’re thrilled to extend our partnership with SBS on this transformational project that represents the future of broadcast television. Hosted from highly secure data centres, MediaCloud was designed to bring enhanced functionality at an affordable cost, whilst at the same time improving quality and reliability. This, together with increased flexibility, also means pop-up channels can easily be accommodated without long term commitments and high cost.”

He added, “The forward-thinking SBS team has wholeheartedly embraced this new industry approach to playout, which has been clearly borne out in the results. Channel launches can now take place in a matter of days, rather than months.”

Deluxe MediaCloud is a component of Deluxe’s comprehensive delivery ecosystem, which offers content preparation and delivery for home entertainment, theatrical, linear and OTT.