Crafting a shopping channel

London & Warwickshire, UK — For crafts, hobbies and arts shopping channel Hochanda, being up and running 24/7 for their customers is a vital element of their business offering. So, it’s no wonder when this rapidly growing specialty channel was wanting to upgrade its service, they looked for the solution to leading live streaming and live-to-VOD service provider Simplestream and digital video solution provider Garland.

With more viewers connecting with the channel, due to an increase in OTT viewing and the ability to watch from multiple devices, Hochanda needed a robust solution that would give them a multi-channel, multi-region solution.

Hochanda chose Simplestream to automate their live streaming and catch-up services across the US, UK and Netherlands. The solution involved deploying the Media Excel HERO transcoder from Garland with a firmware integration from Simplestream’s Media Manager. This allowed Simplestream to remotely manage Hochanda’s OTT and end-to-end service. The number of channels was increased from one to three, with each channel feed archived for 60 days, allowing audiences to go back and watch any show they missed over the past two months.

“Simplestream and Garland really delivered on this deployment,” says Craig Norris, Director of IT for Hochanda. “We have a scalable video processing, streaming and playback solution that meets the needs of our growing audience, who want to watch Hochanda content anytime, anywhere across any device.”

“Media Excel’s HERO solution provides superior scalability, and the greatest density, flexibility, and power efficiency while offering unmatched multi-screen HD delivery,” says Lorna Garrett, Commercial Director of Garland. “We knew it would do the job required as it lets Hochanda move from a single bitrate RTMP delivery to HLS adaptive bitrate streaming. This has improved both the capability and reliability needed to reach all types of connected devices.”

“Hochanda is another great example of us working with Garland to provide on-premise, live and 24/7 streaming services,” says Dan Finch, Simplestream’s Chief Commercial Officer. “Having Media Excel encoders on site, remotely managed by our talented technical team, allows us to deliver exceptionally high streaming quality that gives Hochanda the flexibility to add future channels as they learn more about their customers. This will enable them to deliver more targeted programing to meet the needs of niche, loyal and growing audiences as Hochanda’s business requirements change.”