MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—TVU Networks today released a year end tally of business activity—all of which underscores 2021 as being a year of rapid adoption of remote production and cloud-based alternatives to traditional solutions across the entire media supply chain.
For example, the company saw a 243% increase in SaaS use this year compared to 2020 across all business sectors, including media, sports and entertainment, it said.
“The impact of the pandemic on the media and entertainment industry cannot be overstated,” said TVU Networks CEO Paul Shen. “It necessitated an evolution that would have taken a far longer time, roughly five years in our estimation, under business-as-usual conditions.
“Customers are seeing firsthand the advantages of adopting cloud-based solutions to enhance or replace their traditional broadcast workflows. As the cloud continues to disrupt production paradigms, the benefits are clear: lower cost, faster to air, increased flexibility and greater monetization opportunities.”
Expanding its portfolio of solutions that enable working remotely, TVU Networks this year unveiled new cloud-based solutions, including TVU Remote Commentator and TVU Channel, the company said.
TVU Remote Commentator enables sports producers and event organizers to add synchronized, real-time audio commentary from multiple play-by-play and color commentators located in separated geographies via the internet.
TVU Networks also launched TVU Channel, a cloud-native, pay-as-you-go playout solution that enables users to launch and manage live and VOD channels from a web browser. It offers SCTE ad insertion and third-party scheduling platform support and can be used to play out to social media, CDNs and OVPs.
“The overwhelmingly positive response to TVU Channel since its launch in October has exceeded our expectations,” added Shen. “We have a major TV broadcaster that’s deployed the platform and is using it for all programming on a new channel it launched, as well as the backup channel for their existing on-premise channel to protect against any unexpected disruption. The platform is already supporting hundreds of thousands of viewers.”
IP network delivery also experienced a surge, indicating it as an M&E Industry preference for content distribution. Over the past year, use of TVU Grid, the company’s IP-based video switching, routing and distribution solution, increased 20% compared to last year, it said.
Use of the company’s content distribution platform to manage and distribute video also experienced accelerated growth with a 752% increase in the hours of downloaded video in 2021 compared to last year. Leveraging the company’s AI and cloud-based search capability, called TVU Search, broadcasters could find the clips they desired from massive amounts of footage gathered covering the Capitol Riot, the Impeachment Trial, the Summer Games in Tokyo and the Dubai Expo 2020, which is occurring in 2021 and 2022 due to the pandemic, the company said.
TVU Networks also saw continued strong growth in its IP transmitter business as well as strong demand for TVU Media Services, which supplies equipment rentals for major events, live content search, clipping and data services. As it did for the Summer Games in Tokyo, TVU Media Services will offer broadcasters equipment rentals, 24/7 camera shots and other services for the upcoming Winter Games in China.
More information is available on the company’s website.
