New cloud-based TV solution with adaptive bit rate streaming for hotels from Locatel and Anevia

New cloud-based TV solution from Locatel and Anevia (creators of VLC) brings hotels unlimited choice of TV channels, ability to change channel subscriptions at any time, multi-screen compatbility and bandwidth optimisation thanks to adaptive bit rate stre

Paris, France(16 Oct 2013)

Any Channel, Any Time

Upscale hotel properties in EMEA often broadcast over a hundred TV channels to meet guests’ various nationalities, viewing preferences and ever increasing expectations. Until now, this typically required expensive equipment - such as local head ends and feeds from multiple satellite dishes, cable systems and antennas - to be installed and maintained in-house. In addition to being expensive, changing or adding channels in such an environment usually results in momentary service disruption.  

LOCATEL’s new Eclipse Cloud TV is powered by Anevia CloudTV for Hospitality, a service that allows hotels to add or change subscribed TV channels at the click of a button, anytime and as often as they like. All required TV content is collected and managed in a remote data center before it is sent to the hotel through a single fiber optic cable. Whether a foreign delegation temporarily requires a new set of channels, or a major sporting event needs to be broadcast on a specific date, expensive technical adjustments are a thing of the past. Last but not least, Anevia CloudTV for Hospitality is based on adaptive bitrate delivery to make changing channels and ordering new content on demand faster and more reliable than ever. This cutting edge technology optimizes Internet bandwidth usage in order to respond to client requests faster and eliminate jitters in picture quality.

“Eclipse Cloud TV is a service that our key customers have been requesting for years, and it is fully aligned with our strategy to accelerate hotel innovation in the shape of flexible, hosted services” explains Antoine Trannoy, CTO at LOCATEL. “Eclipse Cloud TV complements our portfolio of hosted connected TV and Internet access products, not to mention our recently launched suite of mobile entertainment and information solutions. Hotels can now concentrate on their core expertise, while we deliver the turnkey information and communications systems they need to deliver quality, choice and mobility to their customers.”

 “We introduced this new service on top of the famous Flamingo, our modular, easy-to-configure-and-deploy suite of IPTV head-ends for the hospitality market, in order to accelerate innovation at our customers’ doorstep,” adds Damien Lucas, EVP and Anevia co-founder. “To access an ever-increasing number of channels, what they need is a cloud based head-end that leverages every single Flamingo on-site to deliver those channels. So we are extremely proud to team up with LOCATEL’s services, middleware, mobility and system management solutions to provide this cloud-based TV delivery service: a first in the industry. Together, we gave birth to a winning combination for our hospitality customers, pairing unlimited TV channel line-up - brought to hotel TV screens and guests’ mobile devices - with a flexible business model that makes long-term contractual commitments history.” 

The first European rollouts of LOCATEL’s Eclipse Cloud TV will be announced over the next few weeks. More deployments will follow across the Middle East in early 2014.