BOSTON -- Imagine Communications, empowering the media and entertainment industry through transformative innovation, today unveiled a potentially industry-altering strategic initiative targeted at maximizing the competitive standing and prominence of video service providers in the media and entertainment industry value chain. The primary objective of the company's unified distribution initiative is to empower content distributors with the ability to accelerate the modernization of their networks by facilitating the transition of critical operations to next-generation, Internet-based networks.

PayTV operators in recent years have built out HTTP-based networks that use adaptive bitrate (ABR) technologies to stream programming and ads to Internet-connected devices, including smartphones, tablets, PCs and connected televisions. These new over-the-top (OTT) networks are often built in parallel with traditional video transport networks that deliver content to subscribers' televisions through set-top boxes (STBs). The burden and expense of maintaining multiple video delivery and ad insertion infrastructures is inhibiting the ability of some video service providers to innovate and modernize their infrastructures through the adoption of next-generation technologies that introduce new orders of agility and flexibility.

Imagine Communications' unified distribution initiative is designed to address these issues by enabling content distributors to consolidate multiple video delivery and ad insertion infrastructures into a software-based, state-of-the-art HTTP network that uses ABR technology. By transferring primacy from legacy to next-gen architectures, video service providers can significantly reduce capital and operational expenses and increase their ability to explore new business opportunities by moving operations to software-based, datacenter environments built on generic computing and networking platforms.

Imagine Communications