Arqiva and MediaKind have launched Arqplex, a headend service for broadcast and online video networks. It aims to delivery broadcast-grade service levels to online video operations, while being based on a pay-as-you-go model.
The fully managed headend-as-a-service has been designed and developed for a broad range of broadcasters and network or platform operators, including leading global, regional, and national broadcasters and regional cable and satellite network operators. Arqiva has begun migrating some existing customers to the platform.
The Arqplex service provides secure and reliable content aggregation, encoding, multiplexing and packaging for the distribution of programming. It also includes options to manage ad insertion and catch-up capabilities.
The partnership combines MediaKind’s cloud-native multiplexing, encoding, and packaging headend media processing technology delivering globally renowned content quality and distribution reliability with Arqiva’s expertise in managed services, systems integration and connectivity.
Media service providers can use AWS public cloud, an alternative cloud provider or Arqiva datacentres.
“With viewers fragmenting across platforms making things more complex and costly, our solution radically simplifies the headend operations of broadcasters and OTT operators,” said Shuja Khan, the chief executive of Arqiva.
Arqiva provides national terrestrial television and radio broadcasting services in the United Kingdom and distributes over 1,000 channels internationally using fibre and satellite infrastructure.
MediaKind was created in 2018 from the former Ericsson Media Solutions business, created through the acquisition of a number of companies, including Envivio, Fabrix, Microsoft Mediaroom and Tandberg Television. Ericsson retained a 49% stake in the company.