Vista Worldlink live streams pro football matches with OTT solution from Harmonic

Harmonic, a provider of video delivery technology and services, has announced that Vista Worldlink, provider of transmission services and a full service provider to the sports industry among others, has selected Harmonic’s software-based compression platform for live OTT streaming of USL professional Division 2 (status recognised by the US Soccer Federation) football games.

Using the Electra solution for encoding and packaging, Vista Worldlink can instantly deliver HD production quality video to a variety of streaming platforms, including YouTube, while ensuring a superior quality of experience for viewers thanks to Harmonic’s video compression technology. 

Harmonic’s Electra video system enables UHD VR content to be distributed on a variety of devices

“For a streaming offering to be truly successful today, especially for live sports, it has to be delivered with exceptional video quality on every screen,” said Roy Liemer, co-founder and CEO of Vista Worldlink. “We chose Harmonic’s solution because of the pristine video quality it provides, as well as its flexibility. When we are ready to add more services in the future, we know using a fully software-based platform will make expansion easy.”

The combination of high performance encoding and packaging in a single, unified solution decreases Vista Worldlink’s footprint in an already densely populated headend and minimises power consumption, reducing operational costs. Moreover, Harmonic’s integrated streaming solution enables Vista Worldlink to capture revenue from a growing OTT market by simplifying the packaging, encoding and delivery process. According to Digital TV Research, global OTT TV and video revenues will reach $64.78 billion in 2021.

“With live sports video streaming, timing and video quality are critical. Our expert sales engineering team deployed the Harmonic live streaming solution for Vista Worldlink in a very tight timeframe of just two weeks so they could be on-air for the start of the North American soccer season,” said Doug Triblehorn, regional vice president of sales, North America Broadcast at Harmonic. “Harmonic continues to lead the industry in OTT service deployments thanks to the flexibility and unparalleled video quality our solutions provide.”

Harmonic will demonstrate its latest OTT technology innovations on stand 1.B20.