CASE STUDY

TVSN is Australia and New Zealand’s leading broadcast network, specialised in home shopping. A 24/7 destination for commercial television programming, TVSN chose Simplestream to power the expansion of its TVSN Now service on multiple platforms.

With the precise mandate to innovate and modernise the experience for millions of TVSN users, Simplestream was briefed to build a powerful framework to deliver, present, and – most importantly – monetise premium content. To integrate a plethora of existing proprietary APIs, Simplestream needed to work on a harmonious architecture, able to enhance the experience for existing audiences and attract new ones.

Simplestream deployed its core products for the most innovative end-to-end solution built in the Teleshopping sector to date. The requirement of an architecture able to support both VOD and live streams made it necessary to build the solution on the Media Manager backend, including its flexible core modules. Content is stored with Akamai and presented through TVSN’s API to be encoded and normalised before it can be packaged for distribution. App Platform, the out-of-the-box solutions for the distribution of premium content, represents the frontend destination, with apps built for Android, iOS, LG TV, Samsung TV, and tvOS.

The live solution encompasses two different types of streams:

• A ‘pass-through’ stream is received from TVSN’s encoder, inclusive of EPG data, subsequently rendered on the applications.
• Content provided to Simplestream, is directed to Channel Studio, scheduled, and ultimately played out as a virtual channel.

Thematic channels are built by utilising existing clips of on demand content, packaged into one-hour long segments, and scheduled for one or multiple days to be delivered as linear programming, with opportunities for upsell and oversell thanks to data-driven, dynamic graphic overlays.

Graphic overlays – the latest enhancement to Simplestream’s monetisation capabilities – are powered by endpoints stored within the VOD asset provided by TVSN. Information includes details such as product descriptions, pricing, stock levels, and more. The information is directed to a proxy, ingested, transformed by Singular Live and rendered as a graphic overlay that goes to the frontend, applied to both on demand and live streams.

Simplestream delivered a complex project by deploying its core value proposition and by enhancing the use of VOD-powered virtual channels to help TVSN to open new monetisation opportunities. Channel Studio sits at the heart of the overall solution for it allows TVSN to increase the level of engagement on the TVSN Now applications, and to innovate the experience for end-users.

The deployment of cutting-edge technology and the integration of several third-party APIs proved to be impactful. Simplestream will support TVSN in the delivery of thematic channels and thousands of hours of commercial TV content to millions of users in Australia and New Zealand.

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