Deutsche Fußball Liga (DFL) selected TeraVolt's TVXRAY product to enhance the live football experience. Together with Amazon Web Services, we provide the Interactive Feed to DFL clients worldwide.
The dynamic tech lineup behind the Bundesliga’s award-winning Interactive Feed for DFL Deutsche Fußball Liga is featured now on the AWS Media Blog: https://go.aws/36QGXEV
Synamedia, the world’s largest independent video software provider, announces the launch of its complete Synamedia Go cloud video suite at NAB 2022. We are proud to be part of the launch lineup of partners with our product, TVXRAY.
With TVXRAY you can enhance sports broadcasts with a Gen-Z-ready video and data experience. TV platform operators and networks can take advantage of this via the ready-to-go pre-integration into the Synamedia ecosystem.
Press release Synamedia: here.
LONDON – 25 April 2022 – Synamedia, the world’s largest independent video software provider, today announced the launch of its complete Synamedia Go cloud video suite. Go.Foundation, the entry-level service, is complemented by a suite of new packs, including Go.Monetize, Go.Personalize, and Go.Recommend. Synamedia Go offers video service providers of any size everything they need to rapidly launch a streaming service, as well as the ability to customize it to increase value.
The full suite of Synamedia Go reflects the need for an agile, flexible SaaS platform that balances functionality with speed-to-market for VOD and live streaming services. Whether customers are OTT providers, broadcasters, or pay-TV operators, Synamedia Go includes all the functionality and flexibility required to acquire, manage, and distribute content. The expanded service will debut at Synamedia booth W10113 at NAB 2022 in Las Vegas on April 23rd-27th.
Synamedia Go’s open design gives customers a choice of using pre-integrated third party solutions from providers in the Synamedia Partner Network. Initial partners are: Dotscreen, To The New (TTN), Wiztivi (for UI); Cleeng, InPlayer, and Evergent (for monetization and identity); Gracenote, Teravolt, and Utelly (for metadata, recommendations, and aggregation). Synamedia’s own security, addressable advertising, business insights, and video network solutions are also pre-integrated with Synamedia Go. Alternatively, customers can develop their own applications or use their preferred provider for common components such as metadata, CRM, and billing systems.
Nick Thexton, Synamedia CTO, said, “As we move into a new generation of streaming platforms, media businesses of all types need systems that are much more flexible. New viewing experiences have to be matched quickly to commercial objectives, consumer satisfaction, and performance optimization."
“Building on our decades of experience designing video software solutions, Synamedia Go meets this need for flexibility and rapid implementation. It bridges the gap in the market between very basic systems and, on the other extreme, highly customized solutions that can be very expensive to modify once live. Synamedia Go complements our broad OTT portfolio, including Synamedia OTT ServiceGuard, VIVID Workflow as a Service, Synamedia Iris OTT addressable advertising, and Synamedia Clarissa business insights,” Thexton added.
Tom Morrod, co-founder and research director at industry analyst firm Caretta, said, “With the average household wanting no more than 3 or 3.5 different streaming services, the industry is in a battle to be the bundle in the home. This requires whole new levels of agility to launch and update streaming services. To meet this need, video service providers are now looking for cloud-based, modular SaaS solutions that incorporate best-of-breed offerings for the perfect combination of speedy deployment and functionality.”
With a focus on personalization, monetization, and enhancement, the base product Go.Foundation includes VOD and linear content management, rights management, metadata and data control, user experience management, user engagement, and subscription options.
In addition, the new add-on packs that can be added to a customer’s service instantly are:
These packs are in addition to Go.Aggregate, launched in 2021, which manages the complexity of offering multiple streaming services, both on demand and linear TV content.
Synamedia Go is platform- and client-software-agnostic, and can be fully integrated with Android TV, RDK, Apple TV, iOS, WebOS, and Tizen applications. By allowing customers to predict costs and manage the total cost of ownership, Synamedia Go uses a simple bundled pricing model based on the number of subscribers and add-on packs.
About Synamedia
We’re trusted by over 200 video service providers to deliver, protect, and monetize video content in an increasingly IP world. Synamedia’s flexible incremental architecture provides a rapid, friction-free way to add, build, and deploy cloud-based video services. Our award-winning portfolio also includes intelligence-led anti-piracy, advanced advertising, business analytics, broadband, and video network solutions and services. Synamedia’s technology is on 320 million active devices and secures $70 billion in revenue annually. Synamedia is backed by the Permira funds and Sky.
Twitter: @SynamediaVideo
LinkedIn: Synamedia
For press and analyst queries, please contact:
Rachel Postlethwaite
RTL Germany relies on TeraVolt for GigaTV migration from RTL+ to implement an app in Metrological's Lightning Framework.
Hamburg, March 31st, 2022 – TeraVolt wins RTL Germany as a new client. The Hamburg-based solution provider for digital media products will take care of integrating the RTL+ streaming service into the GigaTV user interface. The goal is to launch the RTL+ app on the Vodafone platform before the end of the year. RTL+ premium customers will then also be able to access more than 55,000 hours of content in various genres via GigaTV: from top-class fiction in-house productions such as "Sisi" or "Der König von Palma" to shows, documentaries, and feature films, as well as live broadcasts of UEFA Europa League and UEFA Europa Conference League matches.
The basis for the GigaTV migration of RTL+ is the Metrological Lightning Framework. TeraVolt has been working with Metrological's technological frameworks for years and is specialized in developments within Metrological's so-called Lightning Framework (part of Comcast Technology Solutions). Oliver Koch, founder and CEO at TeraVolt, says: "RTL+ is one of the most important players in the streaming segment with its content and strategic orientation. We are all the more pleased to develop the app together with RTL Germany and make it available on GigaTV. At the same time, we are further expanding our long-standing successful collaboration with Vodafone along the new processes."
Alexander Krey, head of platform growth of RTL+, adds: "We develop most of the applications for RTL+ in-house. However, our colleagues at TeraVolt are real experts in working with Metrological's Lightning Framework. That's why they are exactly the right partner to make RTL+ easily and directly accessible to GigaTV users as well. We are very much looking forward to the collaboration and the launch, which should take place later this year."
About TeraVolt:
TeraVolt is a solution provider for digital media products based in Hamburg's Schanzenviertel. Founded in 2006, the company specializes in the digital transformation of television and develops customized solutions together with its customers from the initial idea to innovative products for operational use. The portfolio includes applications in the segments Managed Platforms, Enhanced TV, and OTT, as well as the business areas Consulting and Services. In addition, TeraVolt also offers its own products, such as the Sports Entertainment Suite "TVXRAY" and the Addressable TV Solution "SmartPages". The TeraVolt team consists of four experienced managing directors and 45 experts in the areas of product, strategy, and technology. https://www.teravolt.tv/coversilder-home_eng
Competition among TV broadcasters and streaming services continues to grow. Viewers have more choice and are becoming more demanding. For providers, this means world-class competition in terms of content and the need for a customer experience on a par with the top media brands. The most efficient way to achieve a sustainable customer experience is through detailed testing during the development process as well as a well-thought-out Quality Assurance (QA). I wrote about the reasons within a byline for FKT Magazine, which I would also like to share with you.
When a football match in the German Bundesliga was shown exclusively on Eurosport for the first time in August 2017, subscribers were completely annoyed. However, the trigger was not the match on offer, but the fact that many of them were literally seeing black. The broadcaster had to contend with massive technical problems due to the high volume of viewers. It was not a good start for Eurosport as the rights holder for the live broadcast of a total of 45 Bundesliga matches per season at the time. And it's no wonder that the commitment has since ended again.
Quality assurance is the key to success
This case is an object lesson in how important a good customer experience (CX) is in video streaming. On the other hand, poor CX can hardly be compensated for by even the best content. The fact that Amazon, Apple, Disney, and even more players are actively participating in the "streaming wars," and they also have gigantic resources at their disposal, only makes a good CX even more important, especially for smaller players, in order to hold their own against the competition. There's a lot to gain here – but also a lot to lose.
Content playout via app is becoming increasingly complex across the entire value chain due to competition for content, greater diversity of technologies, and platform effects. The success of D2C offerings in particular, which distribute their content independently rather than via the major platforms, depends crucially on good QA and smooth CX.
Release testing is part of the development process
For viewers, a good customer experience is an absolutely key criterion. That's why it's important for providers to put their own service through its paces with a lot of love, to put it through its paces well before launch, and to eliminate errors. This starts as early as the development stage. Professional test teams should be involved in the entire software development cycle and test it using carefully selected test methods (static, dynamic, black box, white box, etc.) and types (e.g., functional, structure-related, requirements-related) at all stages (component tests, integration tests, system tests, and acceptance tests). In this way, they can provide early support in eliminating errors and resolving ambiguities. After all, one of the principles of testing is: the earlier the better! A particularly promising approach is to set up such a testing process for the long term, right up to the final release.
For the customer of a large OTT offering, TeraVolt was able to identify an average of 6.7 bugs per regression test in the digital products using pre-release acceptance and release testing. With thorough testing, efficiency and reliability (retention) can be ensured and bugs fixed before an application is launched. TeraVolt was able to identify almost 3,800 bugs in the last four years with the help of the development-accompanying testing at the aforementioned customer and thus drastically reduce the error rate before the customer. In addition, approximately 6,200 feature tickets were tested in detail during the project in acceptance testing before the release. This ensured that new modules of the application met the functional requirements of the product team as well as the expectations of the users. The successful combination of release and acceptance testing is also reflected in the app store ratings, which are now at a consistently high level for Android (4.3) and iOS (4.5), for example.
Quality control in the further course
But quality assurance before launch is not the end of the story. Even after launch, providers must stay on the ball. After all, errors can occur again and again during live operations and have a variety of causes: Platforms can implement new software, change backend structures and provider APIs, or adapt payment processes. Meanwhile, advertising providers optimize their advertising integrations and change their delivery processes. In addition, app releases bring additional features and new content, but also new sources of errors that can impair the customer experience – sometimes even in the form of total failures. To prevent this, it doesn't even take too much effort, but it does take a well-structured approach to software maintenance and support, as well as careful testing after further developments.
Live monitoring for short-term solutions
The final pillar of a promising QA portfolio is live monitoring. This gives providers the opportunity to have their products monitored live while the respective content is being broadcast and to be informed immediately of any faults or restrictions to the customer experience. This not only enables timely troubleshooting in the event of errors, but also provides a unique view of the product's performance.
The Arte Media Library case study.
TeraVolt's work for the German-French TV channel Arte began with an initial inventory of all devices (TVs, OTT, and satellite boxes); this involved testing basic functions and randomly checking content playback on around 60 devices. In the next step, a report recorded the errors and faults found. Based on the inventory, the current version of the app was blacklisted on devices on which it did not run at all or ran incorrectly. Instead, a legacy version was played out there, i.e., a version of the respective app for older devices. This allowed the developers to isolate the problem and fix it (partly via group conferencing and pair programming), so that the blacklisting could be lifted device by device and the app could go live again.
Kemal Görgülü, Chief Technology Officer at Arte, confirmed that the media library has improved enormously in terms of availability and user experience as a result of quality control, because the app is now continuously tested on almost all common devices, including older devices. Debugging, where appropriate, is done in direct collaboration between testers and developers, involving the affected devices. The corrections have led to a sharp decrease in reported errors.
Conclusion: Quality assurance with release testing and quality control are the be-all and end-all – before and after the launch.
Summarizing all these findings, it becomes clear that quality assurance is usually of very underestimated value when it comes to building and maintaining a TV app. This is the only way to ensure a lasting, high-quality customer experience - which in turn turns viewers into satisfied users. This makes it clear that the customer experience of streaming media services and TV media libraries is a key success factor alongside content. Users switch off if the content is not relevant and stop using apps that don't work. Providers who don't take this seriously enough run the risk of losing their viewers to the competition, which is getting bigger rather than smaller in the face of the “streaming wars”. This is exactly why quality assurance has never been more important in the TV segment.
Hamburg, January 10, 2022 – TeraVolt GmbH has been commissioned by ARD to develop a client system for all ARD teletexts based on HbbTV. This enables all state broadcasters to bundle their HbbTV teletexts into just one system and broadcast them together. It thus replaces the individual solutions used to date. At the same time, there will be a switch to a uniform user interface, which will make it easier for viewers to navigate. In the future, all HbbTV teletext will be managed in one system, creating synergies in operation but also new opportunities for editorial cooperation.
The ARD Play-Out Center (ARD POC) is responsible for operating the TeraVolt-developed client system and coordinating the orderly migration of the system to the individual state broadcasters. The first of these was BR on September 1, followed by rbb in December 2021. The launch of NDR and ARD Text is planned for the first quarter of 2022.
The system can be configured independently and individually by the ARD POC for the respective state broadcaster. Based on this configuration, the data from different sources is cleaned in a high-performance process chain in real time, normalized, and finally played out in the HbbTV application as teletext.
"We are pleased to provide ARD with a smart solution for the operation of HbbTV teletext," says Oliver Koch, founder and CEO of TeraVolt. "We would like to repay the trust of all state broadcasters with performance in order to recommend ourselves for possible further customers. Because our system represents a real alternative for all broadcasting groups that need a uniform solution for different users."
Frauke Langguth, Head of ARD Text, adds: "Our goal is to position ourselves for the future, both in terms of content and technology. With the HbbTV client system, the operation of HbbTV teletext will be centralized, allowing us to achieve synergies and reduce costs at the state broadcasters. The cooperation with TeraVolt is therefore an important project to drive forward the achievement of our goals."
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About TeraVolt:
TeraVolt GmbH is an owner-managed agency for digital TV products and consulting based in Hamburg's Schanzenviertel district. Founded in 2006, the company specializes in the digital transformation of television. TeraVolt advises and develops customized solutions together with its clients – from the initial idea to innovative products in operational use. The portfolio includes services, consulting, and finished products in the segments Managed Platforms, Enhanced TV, Monetization, and OTT. The TeraVolt team consists of four experienced managing directors and 45 experts in the areas of product, strategy, and technology. https://www.teravolt.tv/