CASE STUDY

Hochanda is the UK leading Craft TV Shopping Channel, the ideal destination for crafts, hobbies, and arts lovers. As of 2022, Hochanda acquired Create and Craft, an existing Simplestream client, growing the offering for the UK audience.

Hochanda chose Simplestream to automate live streaming and catch-up services across the UK territory for the Create and Craft channel. As part of the initial brief, Simplestream was asked to develop a solution to be integrated with existing third-party providers. The objective was to simplify the operational workflow for the management of the end-to-end service from remote.

Simplestream deployed Media Manager, the proprietary modular backend to manage content for distribution. The flexible solution allowed Create and Craft to seamlessly control the content workflow, from live streams to on demand assets, with the automation of catch-up generation through the Live2VOD module.

Media Manager supports the ingesting, encoding, packaging, storage, protection, and streaming, of live and on-demand multimedia content. The live stream ingestion automatically generates EPGs – imported nightly from the designated provider – with the ability for the operator to set blackout rules for programs or series and manage the metadata, including imagery to accompany every single program.

The Live2VOD module sits at the heart of Media Manager and provides the client with a best-in-class solution to automate the generation of catch-up content from live streams, within minutes of the broadcast. The definition of publishing windows for content allows Hochanda to easily manage the VOD content for Create and Craft and to ensure full rights compliance.

Simplestream helped the client to streamline and automate the distribution of their crafting and teleshopping-focused programming to a wide audience in the UK. By combining classic hobby and craft programming and concepts of commercial TV, Hochanda’s Create and Craft attracts the attention of hundreds of thousand viewers.

At the core of the solution developed for Create and Craft, sits the 'instant Rewind' feature, which allows the content provider to enhance their live-to-VOD workflow with a dedicated module, reaching industry-leading 'time to live' for catch-up clips to be published on all platforms. The on demand consumption is also enriched by the 'Shop the Show' functionality, which provides the viewer with a list of clickable items, to be purchased as they are presented as part of the programme.