Movistar+ to air El Clásico in 4K


Details

Gabriel Miramar-Garcia

| 24 December 2015




Movistar+ will air the next Spanish Liga match between Real Madrid and Barcelona to satellite pay-TV customers in 4K/Ultra HD based on Envivio’s video processing engine.



This season’s first match at Camp Nou saw not only Louis Suárez inspire Barça to hammer their arch-rivals but also act as a template for 4K production in Spain. For the return at the Bernabeu in Madrid, Movistar broadcaster will also stream the match to connected devices, powered by the Movistar+ application.

DTS Movistar+, a major pay-TV provider owned by Telefonica, wanted to build a platform for satellite direct-to-home delivery and over-the-top (OTT) applications with full multiscreen functionality for the game. The software solution had to not only control the head-end but encode and process the entire network path, from the stadium where the game was played through the video servers.

“We knew that if we were going to make the leap to UHD content delivery, we wanted it to be flawless. Fans don’t want disruptions during their favourite sport, during a top rivalry,” said José Amselem, technical lead for DTS Movistar+.

Envivio’s local partner, QinMedia, provided the encoding and playout server hardware, and was responsible for the deployment, working in close partnership with teams from DTS Movistar+ for the playout part.

Envivio’s Muse Live encoder was selected as the convergence encoder, to simultaneously provide feeds to the DTH headend and the OTT platform. Muse Live supports video compression and pre-processing improvements in MPEG-2, AVC and HEVC and includes Up! a new advanced compression mode.

DTS Movistar+ also used Envivio’s Halo network processor to format the video streams in DASH format to the Movistar+ Yomvi application.

“The challenge to deliver HEVC into the home is that it’s crucial to a paying TV customer to have unparalleled quality,” said Julien Signes, CEO at Envivio. “Envivio has repeatedly demonstrated its industry-leading expertise in the delivery of high-profile, high quality sporting events. Whether it is tennis, football, yachting or track and field, the top media innovators come to Envivio for the software solutions that enable brilliant telecasts. We are happy to have supported one of the most watched Clasico matches.”

Envivio has experience with top football matches having supplied encoding support to Canal+ Group for its satellite and OTT distribution trial of the UEFA Championship League soccer final, which aired on 6 June.

The Champions League final was viewed by more than 350 million European TV households. Canal+ Group leveraged different vendors for the transmission of the event, and Envivio Muse Ultra HD was used for the final compression and satellite distribution in France.