MediaHub provides and deploys Full-IP Ateme solution for VAST news services throughout Australia

SYDNEY, 3 December 2021 – The Viewer Access Satellite Television service (VAST), is a satellite television platform providing digital television and radio services giving access to a suite of metropolitan-equivalent broadcasting services to remote and rural areas, as well as viewers in terrestrial black spots. Late last year MediaHub was awarded the contract to provide ingest, compilation, playout and distribution of the twenty-one concurrent main and backup news channels, with material ingested from forty record sources across all regional Australian broadcasters. MediaHub, in turn, has now provided a “Full-IP” Ateme solution for all of Sothern Cross Austereo (SCA) VAST news services throughout Australia

The federally funded VAST service uses the Optus C1 and Optus D3 satellites and is managed through a joint venture between SCA and Imparja Television.

The Full-IP solution provides MediaHub the ability to playout MXF OP1a file-based-only media in a high bitrate SMPTE 2022-6 video-over-IP output format, whilst maintaining first-class video quality alongside audio and caption integrity.

As part of their rapid transition to becoming a full-IP facility, MediaHub worked closely with Ateme to ensure the initial realisation of this goal using their TITAN and PILOT software range.

MediaHub CEO, Alan Sweeney

MediaHub CEO, Alan Sweeney, said, “Our faith in Ateme and its focused IP centric roadmap has been rewarded with the commissioning of a platform with all the flexibility required as we move into a new era of digital broadcasting with many different delivery points. VAST is the initial deployment in a major project for the balance of our playout platform of over 400 channels. In short, our clients are the ultimate winners.”

Under control of PILOT Media, Ateme’s workflow and orchestration system, news content is captured via TITAN Recorder from existing outputs of WIN, Prime, SCA, and Imparja headends. Once captured, the content moves through an automated file-based workflow into the TITAN Playout environment where it is scheduled and played out over SMPTE 2022-6 outputs into the TITAN Live and TITAN Mux headend.

The PILOT and TITAN platforms are fully virtualised running Docker containers in a Kubernetes environment, enabling MediaHub both future flexibility when considering multi-site redundancy or cloud disaster recovery scenarios, as well as leveraging their expansive common infrastructure platform.

MediaHub MCR

Beyond an existing strong local support presence, Ateme’s distributed 24-by-7 Asia Pacific support team is intimately familiar with the comprehensive TITAN product portfolio. In line with Ateme’s ongoing commitment to upholding a customer-centric approach, an extensive training program is underway to gear up the wider support organisation, and to further cement Ateme’s technical support presence within MediaHub’s operating environment.

An agile yet formalised approach was implemented to ensure alignment between Ateme’s evolving TITAN Playout product roadmap and MediaHub’s vision for the future direction of the company.

Will Munkara-Kerr, Country Manager Australia and New Zealand for ATEME added, “MediaHub and the local Ateme team have done an incredible job designing and implementing a cutting-edge solution that maintains the exacting uptime standards required by the critical nature of the service and our industry in general. It’s rare to feel a part of such a genuine technological leap forward, and I congratulate MediaHub for their forward-thinking business vision and technical leadership, as well as everyone on our side committed to continuing to realise that vision.”

Picture credits
MediaHub Australia’s CEO, Alan Sweeney
MediaHub Australia’s MCR

-Brad