Cgates taps Synamedia as it targets video services expansion

Lithuanian cable operator Cgates has tapped video tech specialist Synamedia to provide a range of solutions for its pay TV offerings.

Synamedia’s tech will support live and time-shifted viewing on set-top boxes and OTT as Cgates grows its offerings.

During the first phase of the pair’s engagement, Cgates went live with Synamedia’s virtualised DCM platform to support the encoding of its 200 cable channels in HD and 4K.

Complementing the virtualized DCM, Cgates is now deploying Synamedia’s Adaptive Bit Rate (ABR) headend, including packaging and storage for VOD and catch-up, as well as the tech outfit’s private CDN to support  both HLS and MPEG-DASH.

Cgates has tapped Synamedia’s technology to deliver services across its TV mobile app and its pay TV service including its new Android set-top boxes.

According to Synamedia, Cgates chose it in part because the cloud-native architecture of both the virtualized DCM and the ABR headend gives it the flexibility to deploy on-premise then move to a hybrid or cloud models as required

Cgates is now working with Synamedia on future enhancements including low latency for live sports streaming, and disaster recovery.

Synamedia worked with its regional partner Scansatec for the Cgates’ deployment. Based in Finland, Scansatec specialises in pre-sales, integration and support for video solutions across the Baltics and Nordics.

Tomas Burovas, CEO of Cgates said: “With bold plans to grow our services, particularly streaming, we needed a technology partner who could share our vision with future-proofed, flexible, scalable solutions. Synamedia stands out from the crowd with its attention to innovation, particularly its latest compression techniques.”

Marius Dabrisius, CTO at Cgates, said: “As a technology partner Synamedia went above and beyond our expectations. For example, we wanted a special feature for when time-shifted content is presented to the player. None of the vendors we were talking to had this feature. We were blown away when Synamedia’s engineering team developed the feature for us in less than a week.”

Julien Signès, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Video Network at Synamedia, said: “We get a lot of attention for our big name customer wins, but our powerful yet cost-effective solutions are also well suited to smaller and medium sized video service providers. By deploying our video network solutions across its entire data plane, Cgates is optimizing the delivery of quality video today and is primed for the next stage of its growth.”