IBC awards recognise Yospace and Snell innovation
13 Jun 2012Yospace, a content distribution innovator which has developed from its mobile origins to create new streaming solutions for non-linear, linear and live delivery, was a first-time exhibitor at IBC2011. Its content replacement technology was seen by leading UK broadcaster ITV, who decided to enter into a proof of concept trial working with its Snell Morpheus automation system – and now that project has made it to the shortlist for the IBC2012 Innovation Awards.
The IBC Innovation Awards recognise significant partnerships to achieve a real creative, commercial or technical advance. To be a finalist a project has to show collaboration between the user, the principle supplier and other technology partners. Of the vast number of proposals submitted to the IBC judging panel, the ITV Yospace and Snell project is one of just four which made it to the finals in the content delivery category.
The Yospace content replacement system is unique in that it delivers to the consumer seamless content with no freezes or buffering delays caused by the receiving device having to switch between different sources of media. The solution comprises of an encoding element and a streaming element. The encoding element interfaces tightly with Morpheus automation to determine the frame accurate boundaries of replacement programming events using its Second Screen Service. The information can be tailored to the end application, and be structured at an event (programme or commercial) level or at greater resolutions for triggers within a programme if required. The timing information sent from Morpheus also includes a mechanism for the end-to-end system latency to be catered for.
The streaming element switches between the standard broadcast output and the potentially tailored replacement content for each user consuming a stream. Because the Yospace streaming is a cloud service, broadcasters do not need to be concerned with scaling the number of simultaneous users and in the granularity of the content tailoring. It is perfectly possible to deliver different content streams to each individual user if required by the broadcaster.
“This is a really exciting achievement for us,” said David Springall, CTO of Yospace. “We worked closely with ITV to demonstrate that we really could deliver what we said: an online or mobile experience that looks to the user exactly the same as the smooth and seamless transmission they are used to in broadcast television, but at the same time, with content that can be tailored by demographic or by individual. This was a great demonstration of the potential next steps in commercial multi-platform delivery, and we are all delighted that the IBC judges have recognised the importance of this innovation.”
Matthew Hogg, Principal Analyst at ITV said: “We saw Yospace at IBC last year and immediately recognised the potential for this technology to support multi-platform delivery, alongside Snell our existing playout technology provider. Yospace and Snell proved to be great partners to work with - getting the system up and running quickly and effectively. We are delighted to be the first UK broadcaster to have proven the concepts of the underlying technologies in partnership with Yospace and Snell. We are now continuing to explore the potential for developing these as real-life systems.”
While the shortlist of finalists for the IBC2012 Innovation Awards were announced at the beginning of June, the nominees will not know who will take home the trophies until the awards ceremony itself, held on Sunday evening 9 September as part of IBC.
Yospace is exhibiting at IBC on stand no. 14.342.