Espial Releases Version 9.0 of its MediaBase VOD Platform

Espial, the Canadian digital TV software company which last year bought US IPTV and video-on-demand technology provider, Kasenna (note: the deal valued Kasenna, which had raised $90 million in funding since its launch in 2000, at around $6.5 million), will today announce the release of version 9.0 of the MediaBase VOD platform that it acquired through the Kasenna purchase. According to the company, Espial MediaBase 9.0 extends the platform's support for cable operators and offers various new features and benefits, including:

• High performance on next-generation commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware. Espial claims that for large operators the platform can deliver up to 1,000 captures, 150TB of storage and 265Gbps video streaming from a single rack; while smaller operators can achieve streaming throughput from 400Mbps up to 37.5Gbps with up to 100 captures on a single server. The company says that the platform demonstrated its high-volume streaming and capture capabilities in rigorous stress tests that generated 30,000 timeshift-TV, network DVR, remote-storage DVR and VOD sessions per hour on a simulated large system deployment. It also says that the platform offers packet-loss recovery for excellent video quality over networks with high packet-loss issues.
• A unified services platform. Espial bills MediaBase 9.0 as supporting simultaneous VOD, nPVR, RS-DVR and timeshift-TV (start-over, catch-up, replay and delayed TV) services.
• Cable backoffice support. Espial says that the platform is compliant with ISA/NGOD standards, and is integrated with the latest version of Tandberg Television's OpenStream Digital Services Platform.

Espial claims to have achieved a 400% performance increase on the new version of MediaBase, with up to 37.5Gbps streaming from a single next-generation HP or IBM server with Intel Xeon 5500-series processors and 10Gbps Network Interface Cards (NICs). Operators can use the platform to do more while using up less power and space, the company says, by leveraging the significant performance and efficiency improvements provided by the latest multi-core Intel processors. "Espial and Intel have worked closely together optimizing Espial Mediabase for the latest Intel Xeon server platform," Kirk Skaugen, VP and general manager of Intel's Server Platforms Group, said in a prepared statement. "As a result, Espial is able to take full advantage of the performance and capabilities of the Intel Xeon 5500 platform, including the Intel X25-E Extreme SSD and Intel 10Gb Ethernet controllers, enabling them to provide a highly competitive product to the IPTV and cable marketplace." Added Espial's VP of engineering, Sanjay Mehta: "With Espial MediaBase 9.0, our telco and cable customers can deliver more captures and streams than ever before. They can leverage the power of Espial MediaBase to achieve optimal economics by running VOD, timeshift-TV and network PVR/RS-DVR services from a single platform. We're continuously optimizing our products to leverage the ever-increasing power and performance of COTS server and storage devices. This means our customers can plan to double their storage capacity and streaming performance at least 200% every 18 months. At the same time, they will also dramatically reduce the physical rack space and power requirements required for their on-demand services."

Espial claims various benefits for the MediaBase platform, including:

• Operational simplicity, thanks to simple installation processes, easy-to-use management tools, the use of COTS software, and multi-year hardware roadmaps to simplify infrastructure planning.
• Highly customized VOD system performance with multiple storage (RAM, hard disk drives, solid state drives), NIC and server options.
• Broad ecosystem support, thanks to testing and deployment with a range of widely used middleware and conditional access systems and set-top boxes.
• H.264 and MPEG-2 support for SD and HD.
• Support for a full range of basic VOD services, including transactional, subscription and near VOD, as well as support for advanced VOD services such as timeshift-TV, startover-TV, network PVR, remote-storage DVR, advertising, and PC-based VOD.
• A MediaBase Services API that simplifies ecosystem integration and allows advanced service development for applications like interactive games and advertising.
• Automated content workflow to manage ingest and workflow of content between middleware, VOD and DRM systems.
• Easy deployment into cable architectures, thanks to ISA, NGOD and MHA compliance.
• An intelligent content delivery network (CDN) that automates movement of popular assets via multicast/unicast networking and automatic demand-based asset distribution for multi-tier deployments.
• Edge-based timeshift-TV, nPVR and RS-DVR captures to maximize storage and network efficiency.
• Packet loss recovery, allowing operators to confidently stream over networks affected with link-level bit errors, packet drops and packet re-ordering.