Softel, a UK-based company that claims to have over 25 years of experience in providing ancillary data solutions--including solutions for interactive TV, opt cuing/ad insertion, subtitling and captioning--to leading broadcasters and service providers across the world (note: for an in-depth overview of Softel and its work in the interactive TV space, see the interview with its CEO, Sam Pemberton, that was published on itvt.com, July 31st), said Wednesday that Portland, Oregon-based interactive TV authoring solutions provider, Ensequence (note: the latter recently announced that it had raised another $20 million and appointed a new CEO--see the article published on itvt.com, September 21st), has become a reseller for Softel's MediaSphere interactive TV platform in the US. The deal will see Ensequence reselling MediaSphere as part of its iTV Manager solution, which the company bills as scaling interactive TV by allowing its customers to manage a high volume of ITV deployments.
According to Softel, MediaSphere is a reliable, scalable and cost-effective interactive TV playout solution that enables rapid testing and easy playout of a large number of ITV applications, with fast access to verification of successful playout. The company says that it supports multiple platforms and formats, and supports a broad range of interactive applications, including interactive advertising and enhanced news information and entertainment programming. "Softel is an ideal partner for us, with its extensive expertise in interactive TV and the flexibility offered by the firm's MediaSphere platform," Kevin Hurst, Ensequence's director of product management, said in a prepared statement. "Our partnership enables Ensequence to offer best-of-breed turnkey solutions to our customers looking to scale their ITV deployments."
According to the companies, Ensequence's interactive TV solution includes a "redundant system for streaming interactive applications and signaling over Gigabit Ethernet in parallel with the live system, and Softel 'overseer' controlling failover between servers, delivering complete reliability for Ensequence and Softel customers."
