Antenna Group adopted Ateme's transcoding and packaging to power ANT1+, a strategic step to improve viewers’ streaming experience for live sports through efficiency and optimisation.
Media, content and entertainment organization Antenna Group owns and operates media assets in Europe, North America and Australia, including its ANT1+ OTT service in Greece, hosted on Google Cloud.
The ANT1+ service is the first Greek media organisation to expand its activities into the OTT market in both Greece and Cyprus, and features ANT1+ Originals, original Greek and international series, films, major sports events, children’s content, documentaries and a complete ANT1 TV library. Its content is curated to match the needs and preferences of the Greek audience of all ages. Users access the platform from a Smart TV, mobile devices and computers on antennaplus.gr.
Antenna Group has adopted Ateme's transcoding and packaging systems to power ANT1+ as a strategic step to improve viewers’ streaming experience for live sports. The service is able to deliver competitive quality video at low bitrates with low latency. Their goal is to optimise performance in ways that increase viewer satisfaction and keep sports fans fully connected and engaged for longer periods, encouraging viewer loyalty.
Costas Colombus, Chief Technical Officer, Antenna Group
Ateme's use of Google Cloud services also gives ANT1+ greater flexibility and scalability, which are needed in order to adapt quickly to peak demands during major live events by optimising resource use during peak periods. With latency kept low and reduced rebuffering, more types of content, including UHD, 4K and HDR, become feasible as well, on all of the mobile and streaming platforms ANT1+ serves.
Ateme Kyrion and TITAN encoders/decoders optimise the delivery platform by repurposing available cloud-native resources for file transcoding. Optimisation is about limiting waste and complexity and, ultimately, increasing efficiency. Through Ateme’s efficient compression used in its encoders, organisations can save bandwidth and lower storage requirements. A single workflow handles both live and file transcoding, and multiple formats can be processed simultaneously, aiming for faster-than-real-time performance.
Ateme’s NEA deploys an elastic CDN and cloud-ready packaging, quickly adjusting the delivery infrastructure to meet demands as they change. Its smart caching and audience-aware streaming also minimise waste, and its just-in-time packaging helps avoid unnecessary processing.
Costas Colombus, Chief Technical Officer at Antenna Group sees content delivery today focussing on fan engagement and the quality of viewers’ experiences. “Ateme’s streaming operations align with these new video consumption models,” he said. “Their team has been responsive and easy to work with as well, making them an ideal partner for us as we continue to evolve our platform."
"Antenna Group now has a solution that enhances their OTT platform and helps them deliver the best possible streaming experience for live events," said Christophe Stigas, Vice President Southern Europe & MEA at Ateme. "By taking advantage of Google Cloud, we make a flexible, adaptable solution available that meets the needs of broadcasters today and into the future." www.ateme.com
