Telefónica selects MediaKind processing for Movistar+ VOD content

Telefónica Selects MediaKind’s Aquila On-Demand Solution to Enhance Movistar+ VoD Experience

FRISCO, Texas — MediaKind, a global change leader in media technology and solutions, announces that it has been selected by Telefónica to enhance the video-on-demand (VoD) offerings of Movistar+, the Spanish telco’s pay-TV subscription service. MediaKind’s Aquila On-Demand solution, which launched in August 2020, will be deployed to deliver rapid asset processing of Movistar+’s on-demand OTT and IPTV content, encompassing transcoding, transformation, packaging, and delivery capabilities.

Aquila On-Demand will enable Telefónica to add several new VoD offerings to the Movistar+ platform, supported by a range of Digital Rights Management (DRM) platforms, including HLS/Fairplay and DASH/CENC. Movistar+ will benefit from premium video quality up to 4K, enabled by MediaKind’s latest HEVC/H264 codec implementations. The deployment will also give Movistar+ a dramatic performance increase, with an innovative microservices architecture allowing the platform to process the media more than twice as fast, which greatly improves the platform’s user experience. Furthermore, Telefónica’s operations will be significantly simplified thanks to a unification of the graphical user interface (GUI) with the VoD controller.

Eugenio Lojo, Head of Transmission and Conditional Access, Telefónica, said: “This past year has demonstrated the insatiable consumer demand for premium quality on-demand video streaming, a trend that will continue. We are continuously looking for new ways to pioneer and deliver the best quality service to our customers. MediaKind’s Aquila On-Demand solution provides us with the ideal tools to ensure Movistar+ provides a consistently exceptional viewing experience. The deployment means that Movistar+’s on-demand content can be made available faster and reach more devices, with an improved video and audio quality. Such a deployment is key to delivering a truly next-generation VOD experience that exceeds our viewers’ expectations.”

Stuart Boorn, VP Product Management, MediaKind, said: “We are delighted to help Telefónica enhance its Movistar+ service with Aquila On-Demand. The solution’s innovative microservices design provides Telefónica with the flexibility and scale required to meet increasing on-demand video streaming requirements, exacerbated by the recent global lockdowns. Relying on our robust in-house processing and delivery software, we can help Telefónica deliver a premium viewing experience to its subscribers that exceeds consumer expectations for a modern VOD service, such as premium picture quality and reach on even more devices.”

Aquila On-Demand forms part of MediaKind’s latest generation of cloud-native software solutions. It also outmodes previous monolithic solutions by providing significant performance improvements and simplifying network integrations with its simple watch folder ingest methodology, public REST API, and embedded load-balancer. The high degree of investment attributed to in-house codec software development ensures continuous evolution in supporting new standards, such as 8K, VVC, and new HDR formats, enabling MediaKind’s customers to react quickly to changing consumer demands, technological trends, and market challenges.