New Zealand's Sky Television Taps thePlatform for Publishing and Management of its Online TV Service

Comcast-owned white-label video publishing company, thePlatform, announced late Monday that it has been selected by New Zealand pay-TV provider, Sky Television, to provide the backend video management for its iSky broadband TV service. Sky subscribers can access most of the service's content in accordance with their existing TV packages: it features live streaming channels, including Sky News New Zealand, CNN and Sky Sports channels; as well as a range of VOD content, including catch-up TV episodes and movies. It also offers movies and TV episodes to rent on a pay-per-view basis. "Our primary focus for the iSky service is to provide a seamless entertainment experience for our subscribers," Sky Television CEO, John Fellet, said in a prepared statement. "thePlatform's proven expertise in supporting large 'TV Everywhere' deployments in North America made them the right choice to deliver the scale required to support our backend video management. The mpx publishing system is easy to use and allows us the flexibility and reliability to ensure that each of our customers logging into iSky are able to watch the shows and movies of their particular Sky subscription package."

According to thePlatform, its cloud-based mpx video management system serves as the central hub for Sky Television's content partners, enabling them to publish video to the iSky Web site. Sky Television is using the company's "TV Everywhere" solution (whose other customers include Comcast and Rogers) to authenticate its subscribers on iSky and authorize online playback of individual videos, based on each subscriber's pay-TV package. It has secured partnerships with broadband ISP's Vodafone, Orcon, Slingshot, Farmside, Xnet, Woosh, Snap and WIZwireless that provide its subscribers with unmetered broadband Internet access when using iSky.