Parabole - Mauritius-Based Broadcaster Unites the Local Community Using Leading-Edge Media Technologies
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Company Overview
Mauritius-based broadcaster Parabole wanted to enhance the listening experience for its customers by making it possible for them to receive the local radio channel through their set-top boxes. The company also wanted to extend its coverage to include the wider Indian Ocean community. The most obvious way of achieving these aims would have involved a costly hardware implementation, so Parabole decided to opt for a purely software-based solution, based on Microsoft® Windows Media® technologies and Windows Media Encoder 9 Series, included with Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003. The concluding solution, which automatically deals with connection breaks without interrupting broadcasts, took just two weeks to develop. As a result, Parabole has reduced its advertising costs and extended its coverage to reach all of the Indian Ocean islands. Today, it now boasts a listener base of some 70,000.
Business Challenge
The media has become ingrained in everyday life. Music and television have a large effect on modern society, and these mediums are used to entertain, inform, and influence mood. Consumers in many countries today are spoilt for choice because of the plethora of traditional radio, Internet-based radio, and satellite and cable TV channels. New channels emerge on a seemingly daily basis and, as has happened in other markets, this often results in the smaller players drifting into obscurity, unable to survive such competitive market dynamics.
Parabole is a small company, based in Mauritius. Despite its size, it is a leader in satellite TV and radio broadcasting and one of two main channels in the region. The Mauritius-based broadcaster wanted to take advantage of the local government’s recent decision to allow local radio, rather than purely private radio broadcasts. It wanted to be in a position to offer its local residents a better user and listener experience by receiving the radio channel through their Parabole set-top boxes, as well as extending its audience to cover the wider Indian Ocean community.
Given the innovative nature of its new service offering, it was clear that technology would play a key role in achieving this ambition. Saleem Thupsee, IT Director at Parabole, says: “IT is very important to us as a business, and we use it as a core tool to solve many of the challenges we face. Technology lies at the heart of our business and is used in every place you could imagine. The only piece of paper you will find in Parabole is the subscription form we receive from subscribers, and even the information from that is then duplicated electronically and stored.”
To deliver the new service, the small Mauritius-based team would need to somehow send content to the Paris head office, which could relay it by satellite to listeners’ set-top boxes.
The most obvious solution involved installing hardware encoders and an MPEG 2 multiplexer in the Mauritius office. This would have required a dedicated leased line of 128 kbps connected to the Paris head office to carry the signal and relay it to the satellite for transmission. This idea was ruled out quickly due to the high costs involved.
Solution
After evaluating and ruling out the hardware option, Parabole was confident the answer was to implement a purely software-based solution. The company considered, but ruled out, media players such as Real Audio and soon realised that Microsoft® Windows Media® technologies would be ideal for its needs.
Parabole initially decided to use Linux-based encoders, but found these inflexible. After dabbling with the open-source technology, it opted to use Windows Media Encoder 9 Series. Thupsee says: “We already use the Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 operating system and Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000, both part of Microsoft Windows Server System™ integrated server software, as core parts of our infrastructure. We considered all our options and even started a pilot using Linux-based encoding technologies, but we found them very unreliable and inflexible for our requirements. We then discovered Windows Media Encoder 9 Series.”
The company used the Microsoft Visual Basic® 6.0 development system. The resultant solution is composed of:
| • | Windows Media 9 Series, included with Windows Server 2003. |
| • | Windows Media Encoder 9 Series. |
| • | Microsoft Windows® XP. |
| • | Microsoft Windows Media Player 10. |
Windows Media 9 Series is an industrial-strength environment for streaming live or on-demand audio and video content over the Internet. It offers advanced streaming functionality and native 64-bit support for even greater scalability, and has built up a reputation in the industry as a powerful streaming media server. Parabole is using Microsoft Windows Media Services to configure and manage its streaming media server to deliver content.
The encoders are used to taking advantage of features such as high-quality, multi-channel sound and support for mixed-mode voice and music content. Codecs are used to compress and decompress the company’s digital media files so that they can be aired by the channel.
Parabole streams the signal at 64 kbps from Mauritius over the Internet, using a public IP address, to the Paris office, which runs Microsoft Windows Media Player 10 on the client to broadcast the signal via satellite. One PC, running the Windows Media Player and the Microsoft Windows XP operating system, is installed together with a network card, a hauppauge PVR card, a Sound Blaster Sound card, and an FM antenna for optimum signal.
Marc Israel, Enterprise Account Manager, Microsoft Indian Ocean and French Pacific, says: “Windows Media is the environment of choice for broadcasters delivering live or on-demand audio and video over the Internet. Leading broadcasters including ClearChannel, MSNBC, and NPR all use Windows Media. Parabole has joined those who have recognised the benefits that Windows Media technologies can bring to broadcasters and listeners alike.”
At the end of 2003, work started on the project, carried out by one of Parabole’s subsidiaries, Glop TV Ltd., specialising in interactive content delivery. The new solution went live in March 2004.
Business Benefits
New Listener Experience Strengthens Local Community
The uplink sends the signal in the Indian Ocean via the EutelSat W2 satellite. Subscribers with a satellite dish and Parabole set-top box can receive this signal and listen to the radio everywhere in Indian Ocean Islands: Reunion, Madagascar, Mayotte, South Africa, Comores, Rodrigues, and Mauritius itself. As a result of this functionality, Parabole's listener base has grown considerably and now stands at 70,000.
The ability to access local news and information has had a positive impact on the community as listeners can keep up to date with what is happening in the region as well as benefit from the general entertainment that radio provides.
Israel adds: "Microsoft and its partners are dedicated to serving the needs of the media and entertainment industry. Working together with companies like Parabole, we can help organisations conquer the day-to-day challenges of doing more with less, and support the creation, management, and delivery of whole new levels of consumer content and experience. The Microsoft goal is to help companies implement integrated solutions that deliver operational excellence, take advantage of new business opportunities, and thoroughly engage consumers while offering the best economic value in the information technology industry."
Reduced Costs and Greater Business Value
The Microsoft software solution implemented by Parabole has proved to be a very cost-effective alternative to hardware or other software solutions. It is easy to set up initially and simple to scale if the broadcaster decides that it wants to extend its reach even further in the future. Such flexibility is key for a small station like Parabole, which has to operate with limited human and support resources.
Thupsee says: "When you look at the cost of technology, you have to consider so much more than just the initial purchase overheads. You also have to understand how much the solution will cost to support and maintain and how long it will be before you have to upgrade. As a result, we made a strategic decision a few years ago to use Microsoft technology for as many of our processes as possible. We have made great progress with this evolution so far. The new codec technology, for example, results in lower costs and greatly reduced encoding, storing, and broadcasting lead times."
Parabole is able to re-invest any savings it makes back into supporting the success of the business. Furthermore, the company has been able to reduce costs in other areas, such as marketing. "Windows Media Services 9 Series supports streaming advertising, which lets us insert or change any type of ad at any point during a broadcast without interruption. This means we can maximise our advertisement reach and, using advance reporting functionality, analyse the impact of our marketing efforts."
Lightening Speed of Development
The beta solution took just three days to develop, using Microsoft technologies. The concluding solution, including the reprogramming of a client, was ready in just two weeks. Parabole was able to take advantage of existing in-house Microsoft knowledge and expertise. Additionally, the broadcaster was able to benefit from the vast array of in-depth development information available through MSDN® developer program, such as the properties, methods, and objects of OCX.
“We tried to create the same solution, using Linux encoders, but it was a very tedious process and just took far too much time to set up. That was valuable time that we could have been spending on adding value elsewhere. We subsequently dropped Linux in favour of an end-to-end Microsoft solution, which was quick and easy to set up. [Microsoft] Visual Studio® and Visual Basic, for example, require just a couple of lines of code to integrate the whole thing, and Visual Basic lets you create the right code for anything you want to manage, whether it be the language or the connection. These development tools were invaluable to us during this project,” says Thupsee.
Enhanced Speed and Reliability Using Microsoft Technologies
The latest generation of Windows Media technologies provides many features and enhancements that offer benefits to the broadcasting community. Microsoft Windows Media Audio and Video 9 Series codecs, for example, provide compression improvements of some 20 per cent for audio compared with previous versions. Compressed digital audio files take up much less storage space than uncompressed files, meaning that small broadcasters like Parabole can maximise limited IT resources. Furthermore, a compressed file—due to the nature of its size—can be transferred, and streamed over the Internet, very quickly. Uncompressed files usually encounter problems during the streaming process.
Listeners who opt to receive the radio channel using the Internet, rather than through their set-top boxes, using Windows Media Player 10, also benefit from the experience of fast streaming. Fast streaming is beneficial to listeners for three reasons:
| • | Fast Start, which delivers and instant-on, playback experience by eliminating buffering time. This applies to single pieces of content, or when users switch between on-demand clips or broadcast channels. |
| • | Fast Cache, which delivers an always-on playback experience. This is possible because content is streamed to the Media Player cache as fast as the network will allow, consequently reducing the possibility of broadcast interruption. |
| • | Fast Reconnect, which automatically restores live or on-demand client-to-server and server-to-server connections, further ensuring an uninterrupted listening experience. |
Thupsee says: “We decided to use encoding technology through the Internet to get the signal stream directly to Paris. We only have a small IT team here, and no-one is specifically dedicated to managing this server, so we needed to be sure the encoder could automatically restore a link if it disconnected for any reason. There was one media player that I tried: the free Real Player, which can do streaming but didn’t have the facility to manage breaks in the stream feed. When I discovered this, I started playing with Windows Media Player and Visual Basic and found out that I could draw OCX from the client and program events to manage and quickly solve any Internet breaks without adversely affecting the connection or listener experience.”
Microsoft Windows Server System
Microsoft Windows Server System is a comprehensive, integrated, and interoperable server infrastructure that helps reduce the complexity and costs of building, deploying, connecting, and operating agile business solutions. Windows Server System helps customers create new value for their business through the strategic use of their IT assets. With the Windows Server operating system as its foundation, Windows Server System delivers dependable infrastructure for data management and analysis; enterprise integration; customer, partner, and employee portals; business process automation; communications and collaboration; and core IT operations including security, deployment, and systems management.
For more information about Windows Server System, go to: www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem
