Global OTT service for live and VOD helps Latvian Television to exceed content availability and quality targets

Norberts Osītis
CEO 

#LatvianTelevision, #OTTCaseStudy, #LiveStreaming, #VoDStreaming, #OnlineVideoPlatform, #StreamingChallenges, #WebAcceleration, #CDN 

Latvian Television – a state-owned public broadcaster in Latvia - produces two free-to-air national TV channels, an internet TV channel for Latvian ex-pats and maintains a large VOD library of thousands of titles with shows previously aired on TV. Most of the content has rights for internet streaming, but some has geographic limitations. 

There are challenges typical to any broadcaster, that must be considered. 

First, there are technical challenges. A part of the audience lives abroad, mostly in Europe, but also around the globe. High quality streaming must be maintained in all regions. Some premium content owners, like International Olympic Committee, require use of DRM encryption to protect their content against unauthorized viewing. Also, automation of content flow and processing is essential to minimize manual work. 

Second, there are financial and business challenges. Budget targets are strict, and expenses should be within acceptable and predictable range, but most important – well justified, given the service is mostly funded by public money. Availability of detailed data of service consumption for in-depth analytics is essential. 

And last, but not least – a public broadcaster bears responsibility to reach its audience always and under any circumstances. A cloud-based, web-scale solution must be used in parallel to legacy systems, that are still the reality for many broadcasters around the globe, and Latvian Television is not an exception. 

Partnering with Backscreen has enabled Latvian Television to cope with many challenges in an efficient and cost-effective manner. 

Here is why:              

• Backscreen – platform as a service, comprising tools like Video Cloud, CMS, global CDN, transcoding, security, workflow automation and playout – covers all elements a broadcaster would need to go OTT. This is exactly what Latvian Television is using for storing, preparing, securing and streaming content globally. 
• Backscreen Playout is a professional grade, cloud-based TV channel playout solution, that is easy to deploy and maintain and can be used as main or secondary playout for any linear TV channel. Latvian Television is using Backscreen Playout as the key component of their disaster recovery strategy; 
• API integration, enabled by well documented and full featured API of Backscreen media platform, allows for minimizing human interaction, thus saving on the most expensive – productive time. Latvian Television has automated most of content ingest and preparation processes via our API and can be viewed as a true example of efficiency. 
• Analytics, enabled by drill-down reports provided within Backscreen media platform, allows Latvian Television to track its audience, categorize content and justify expenses. 
• In addition, Backscreen provides its Advanced Web Hosting service, which comprises dynamically scalable cloud computing resources, DDoS protection, next-generation firewall and global CDN, to Latvian Television to host and distribute its website. Website is the gateway to content, and it must be as secure yet accessible as the content itself. Thus, the concept of publishing website through CDN was well accepted by Latvian Television. 

Latvian Television has a stable streaming service for live and VOD. “Backscreen services provide the same viewing experience both for everyday needs and for peak events with huge number of viewers”, says Ilana Einmane, CIO of Latvian Television. “Partnership with Backscreen is highly successful, thanks to their global infrastructure, well-developed platforms, innovation potential, competencies and “customer first” approach. Besides, using Backscreen global OTT service for live and VOD has helped us exceed content availability and quality targets in terms of monthly online unique visitors”.