Comcast Opens Up Its Video Cloud
Comcast Media Center lets cable partners feed off a video CDN that forms the basis of the MSO's Project Infinity VoD initiative
Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) will let other cable operators tap into a video content delivery network (CDN) that forms the foundation of its Project Infinity video-on-demand (VoD) initiative.
The Comcast Media Center (CMC) , Comcast's Denver-based digital content factory, announced Monday that it will let Headend In The Sky (HITS) affiliates access the centralized, cloud-based CDN, promising to make "thousands" of VoD titles available to its cable partners. HITS, which distributes linear TV channels, interactive TV apps, and some on-demand content to affiliates via satellite and landline links, counts many Tier 2/3 cable operators as customers.
Under the new CDN approach, the CMC will maintain a central, primary VoD library and push the most popular titles to edge caches and local VoD servers based on algorithms and other tricky math. Pushing that content to the edges will help MSOs save on transport costs while letting them tap into a massive VoD library that doesn't have to be replicated in local markets.
The new HITS On Demand offering stems from a video CDN Comcast has developed for its own cable systems. The current version supports VoD on MPEG-2 set-top boxes, though there's speculation that Comcast will adapt it to handle MPEG-4 and IP-connected devices, as well.
The CMC won't say how many VoD titles it will offer to HITS affiliates early on, but Comcast's cable systems currently support about 30,000 VoD "choices."
The CMC will be pitching the new offering at this week's National Cable Television Cooperative Inc. (NCTC) Winter Education Conference in Austin, Texas, a confab tailored to independent cable operators.
Why this matters
The notion of cable-federated CDNs has been gaining interest, so the move isn't unexpected. And there's money to be made. HITS On Demand will help Comcast generate dollars from affiliates while helping the company recoup the investments it's made, and continues to make, in Project Infinity. In turn, smaller MSOs will be able to preserve their existing VoD platform while tapping into a much larger VoD vault and enjoy the kind of storage scale that only major cable operators tend to have.
Comcast's shift into the affiliate CDN model also spells more competition for Avail-TVN , a company that's crafted a video distribution network for the Tier 2/3 crowd, and coupled that with a multi-screen/TV Everywhere component called AnyView that relies on adaptive bit rate encoding.
For more
Read more about cable's CDN ambitions.
Comcast's 'Project Infinity' Takes Flight
Cable Thinking Big With Video-Focused CDNs
Avail-TVN Bankrolls $30M TV Everywhere Play
Avail-TVN Brings TV Everywhere to Tier 2s
Charter's VoD Network Tastes of CDN
Time Warner Cable Hints at Video CDN Plan
— Jeff Baumgartner, Site Editor, Light Reading Cable
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