Harmonic expands cloud coverage with MAM and scheduling capabilities

Harmonic has added advanced media management and scheduling capabilities to its VOS Cloud platform, further accelerating the time to market for new broadcast and OTT services. Broadcasters and service providers now have the power to seamlessly create schedules and manage assets in real time via Harmonic’s VOS Cloud solution thanks to the acquisition of software technology from Chyro, the experts in cloud-based traffic systems.

“A key challenge that broadcasters face today is how to prepare and distribute OTT-ready local channels to MVPDs,” said Bart Spriester, senior vice president of video products at Harmonic. “Adding Chyro scheduling functionality to our award-winning VOS Cloud solution provides the broadcast community with an innovative approach to primary distribution — what we call ‘Distribution 2.0.’ This is a managed way for moving content, either from point A to point B or from many sources to many endpoints, over the public internet. Using the cloud as a centralised resource, broadcasters can efficiently aggregate feeds and schedules from hundreds of stations, resolve content rights and decorate the channels with signalling information critical for OTT fulfillment.”

This advanced technology streamlines the process of scheduling blackouts and the replacement of ads or programing — a major hurdle that has prevented broadcasters from being competitive in the OTT environment. With this complete affiliate aggregation and distribution solution in the cloud for linear channels and schedules, Harmonic continues to lead the industry in enabling video distribution anytime, anywhere, on any device, with exceptional video quality.