Case Studies

Tour de France in Copenhagen 2022 - 5G Broadcast Trial

The tour of 2022 launched in the summer in Copenhagen and with it a lot of world-first end2end 5G experiments were carried out. Danish Broadcaster TV2 with many international partners were involved using 5G technology partly developed in the EU project: 5G Records. The trial used 5G private networks and mm-wave technologies for audio and video contribution and much more. A project on the side involved using 5G Broadcast from the Copenhagen Testbed in collaboration with partners Open Channel, TV2, Qualcomm and Rohde and Schwarz.

Based on experience from the DVB-H pilot in Denmark (described below), mediathand assisted in getting the solution on air. It was a great success. While doing a presentation at Danish Industry organization about the future of 5G, we could follow live the action from the tour on our 5G broadcast compatible mobile devices.

Technical achievements:

Links to the trial by Danish Broadcaster DR and other news sources

Danske Spil Virtual Sports – Multicast over xDSL

When Danish betting company Danske Spil was introducing a new betting concept to the Danish market, mediathand got involved due to our expertise in multicast streaming. The new concept introduced betting for virtual sports including dog racing, horse racing, and football. The matches were generated by Virtuals from UK Company Inspired Entertainment and were delivered to a managed network using multicast technology and tapped by different dealers. Many of the dealers only had xDSL connections as their sole connection, giving some serious issues like picture stuttering and media artifacts due to burst packet losses. This was due to simple throughput limitations in the xDSL connection and issues related to spiky bursty patterns due to unicast traffic on the same network.

mediathand added a custom solution which transcoded and packaged the content to better fit the limitations of the network to prevent packet clogging and added proper QoS tags to the content. mediathand also assisted the network administrator from the ISP in configuring the multicast network to use QoS tags and ensure a smooth multicast delivery of content. The solution came with an extensive 24/7 surveillance requirement, automatic fail-over and opportunity to be operated by internal support. After a few “teething issues” which were quickly fixed, the system reached beyond the carrier-grade reliability in all the years, the system was in operation.

Fun Fact:

Technical achievements:

Link to a Danish news article about the product, and a link to the providers of Virtual Betting games

Live Feed from Danish Suspension Bridge

What started as a “what if” idea from the company behind the Great Belt Bridge in Denmark ended being quite a popular solution, especially during special events. Normally putting up a webcam and streaming the feed live is a no-brainer, but the company behind wanted to make a professional solution with two positions high-end outdoor cameras streaming with high frame rate to show this great manmade construction from its most beautiful sides. One camera filming it in full front on an island and a camera positioned at one of the majestic pylons.

To accomplish this solution, a combination of different delivery protocols had to be used. RTSP streaming from the camera, transcoded to a custom push streaming protocol solution from a dedicated server behind the firewall to a mount point in the cloud. From here the content is transcoded to HD in 50fps and delivered as two versions HLS: Standard HLS and a test feed in Ultra Low Latency HLS (ULL). All the software was developed and operated by mediathand.

Fun Facts:

Technical achievements:

Link to live feeds from the cameras on the Great Belt Bridge in Denmark

Watz Me Now and GPlay - End-to-end Streaming Solution

"Watz Me Now," (later rebranded to GPlay) our pioneering solution, represented a groundbreaking integration of on-premises and cloud-based technologies in Denmark. It introduced innovative features like cloud catch-up and was likely the first to offer a HDMI stick with an approved streaming app. All software, including the streaming platform, custom OS for the HDMI stick, the underlying web-based CRM system for user access purchases and back office for customer access management, was 100% developed in-house. The entire solution prioritized delivering a consistently excellent user experience over a plethora of half-hearted features, ensuring reliability with every use.

Later revisions of Watz Me Now introduced support for MSE-compatible browsers, Chromecast, and Airplay, including live WebVTT support. All streaming utilized the Apple HLS protocol. Additionally, users gained the ability to pause playback on one device and resume from the same point on another device, a feature now considered commonplace but pioneered by our platform in both live and on-demand scenarios.

Technical achievements:

Demo link (rebranded to GPlay), review of Watz Me Now (Danish) and unboxing of the HDMI Stick (Danish)

DVB-H Platform - Open source Service Platform

In 2008, we pioneered the world's first 100% open-source converged mobile media platform, setting the stage for innovation in mobile broadcasting. However, this project provided valuable insights that reshaped our approach to media delivery. From this project, we gained crucial insights into the viability of TV-on-a-Mobile as a standalone business case. We observed that while mobile viewing was prevalent, users tended to snack on short-form content (VOD) on their mobile devices, while reserving long-lasting content consumption for larger screens at home.

Recognizing the evolving viewing habits of consumers, we pivoted towards streaming as a more viable solution. This shift led us to develop Europe's first vMVPD (virtual multichannel video programming distributor) solution in 2013 called Watz Me Now (see next section). This innovative platform allowed streaming on all screens, facilitated by a custom-developed HDMI dongle.

Technical achievements:

Link to IEEE article presenting the platform and results