Harmonic Powers Pay TV and OTT Multiscreen Services for PT Link Net

Indonesian cable TV operator PT Link Net, a subsidiary of First Net, has deployed a comprehensive suite of Harmonic solutions to power its First Media branded pay-TV and video-on-demand (VOD) platform, as well as a new OTT multiscreen service, called First Media Go. Through a high-density, scalable architecture, Harmonic’s video infrastructure solutions enable Link Net-First Media to deliver more than 90 live TV channels, 30 catch-up TV channels, and a wide array of VOD options to its subscribers on every screen, with industry-leading video quality at low bit rates.
“Consumers today need flexibility, and we want to provide them with the highest quality ‘TV Anywhere’ experience possible,” says Desmond Poon, CTO at Link Net-First Media. “With broad format support, scalability and bandwidth efficiency, Harmonic’s video infrastructure solutions allow us to deliver high-quality live, VOD and time-shift TV on every screen, including TVs, PCs, smartphones and tablets.”

For its First Media pay-TV services, Link Net-First Media has integrated the video infrastructure solutions with an existing Harmonic ProView 7100 integrated receiver-decoder for satellite reception. After video content is received at the headend, Harmonic’s Electra encoders provide high-quality, low-bandwidth MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 variable bit rate encoding of SD and HD video content for Link Net-First Media’s services. By supporting up to four SD or HD channels in a single rack unit, the high-density encoders free up bandwidth capacity for additional channels and services in the future.

The Electra encoders are integrated with Harmonic’s ProStream stream processors for multiplexing functions. The ProStream platform is based on a highly robust, extensible and scalable design that lowers Link Net-First Media’s operating expenses through reduced rack space and power requirements. The Electra and ProStream solutions are controlled by Harmonic’s NMX™ Digital Service Manager video network management solution, which provides mass configuring, monitoring and automated redundancy in centralized or distributed architectures.

For its First Media Go “TV Anywhere” services, Link Net-First Media is utilizing Harmonic’s ProMedia Live real-time multiscreen transcoder, ProMedia Carbon file-based transcoder, ProMedia Origin packager and streaming video server and MediaGrid shared storage system. As part of a highly scalable, end-to-end multiscreen video delivery workflow at Link Net-First Media, Harmonic’s ProMedia family performs a variety of essential operations, including live transcoding and packaging, file-based transcoding and origin streaming. ProMedia dramatically simplifies OTT multiscreen delivery by enabling Link Net-First Media to deliver content in formats required by all major devices and mobile operating systems. The ProMedia Origin server is integrated with a Harmonic MediaGrid shared storage system to provide fast and reliable central storage for catch-up TV and VOD content.

Leveraging Harmonic’s WFS file-based workflow engine, Link Net-First Media can control multiple ProMedia transcoding nodes. Open and extensible, WFS increases operational efficiency by automatically processing transcoding tasks, failover support, job distribution management, job prioritization, load balancing, file transfer, status monitoring and job notification.

“As a longtime Harmonic customer, Link Net-First Media has first-hand experience with the compression expertise and world-class quality that our video infrastructure solutions provide,” says Dario Choi, VP of sales, Asia-Pacific at Harmonic. “Leveraging the flexibility, scalability and reliability of an integrated infrastructure solution from Harmonic, Link Net-First Media can continue to expand its service offerings, providing customers with more channels, better video quality and advanced features such as catch-up TV on any screen.”