CASE STUDY

Walter Presents is a video on demand service powered by Channel 4 and part of the All 4 platform in the UK, with established presence also in Ireland, Australia, United States, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland. The channel’s proposition specialises in foreign language drama and comedy, with English subtitles.

Simplestream was appointed to deliver a strong syndication set up between Walter Presents and Comcast to distribute’ content in the United States. Among the challenges of the ambitious project, the content owners looked for a solution that included a unique, custom integration.

The syndication-only infrastructure developed for Walter Presents is built upon Media Manager’s core modules to allow any operators to manage the content workflow with the ease of a cloud-based infrastructure.

Media Manager lets Walter Presents manage the on demand content, as well as the relevant metadata, images and the syndication workflow for distribution. Simplestream provides an XML feed to Comcast, using custom syntax to allow the rendering of a list of VOD assets in carousels or specific boxset sections, within the Comcast TV setup. While Simplestream uses the proprietary ingest workflow – by encoding the metadata, images and video – the solution required enhanced UI to support multiple images, in different ratios and formats (16:9, 2:3, square, banner).

The expansion of Walter Presents overseas, with emphasis on the US market, was made possible by a smooth syndication workflow. The successful content offering, with many hundreds of hours of content in original language and subtitles, has proven key for Channel 4’s brand to grow its presence in the United States and other countries around the globe.

From a technical perspective, Simplestream built a solution that results in a non-linear FAST channel. The video content is syndicated as VOD to Comcast, for which Simplestream added a new syntax, improving the UI to seamlessly manage the content workflow.