Its simulcast channels have had their infrastructure moved into the cloud by AWS
ITV has turned to Amazon Web Services to move its simulcast channel infrastrucure into the cloud.
ITV provides six linear channels to its ITV Hub service, and also delivers these channels directly to third-party distribution partners. In the past, ITV Hub had relied on 15 on-premises encoders for this.
It has now switched its video processing and transport to the cloud with AWS Elemental MediaLive and AWS Elemental MediaConnect.
The platform is now distributed across two playout centres located in the north and south of the UK. These playout centres provide the six ITV channels for satellite and terrestrial transmission, and to the live streaming platform encoders.
The AWS Elemental Live encoders process the incoming HD SDI video into contribution quality transport streams at 25 Mbps, which are then received in the cloud by MediaConnect - which transcodes the feeds into three adaptive bitrate variants for PC, mobile and connected TV devices.
This cloud path is across multiple Availability Zones for added resilience. Multi-region operation is also an option to add another level of resilience. Additional stream processing provides packaging to HLS and DASH, digital rights management (DRM), advert replacement conditioning, and distribution via CDN.
Andrew Pearson, principal solutions architect, content supply and distribution at ITV, said: “Linear transmission is alive and kicking, but the trajectory is shifting to more stream-based viewing. Having more of our live stream workflow in the cloud will allow us to better serve all of our audiences and keep pace with evolving viewer expectations.
“Considering the scope of the project, we carefully examined our options, and AWS emerged as a clear winner in many categories. We’re confident that AWS will continue to bring us innovative new features that will allow us to elevate the viewer experience.”
He added: “SaaS and the cloud in general are attractive because they’re simple and convenient. We can use MediaConnect to MediaLive and spin up resources, even from a home office if needed, to handle peak audiences for a major live event and then spin them down once complete, and that flexibility is economical; it’s transforming broadcast as we’ve come to know it.
All components in the system have 1:1 redundancy, and ITV has also added AWS Elemental encoders to reduce its datacentre footprint.
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