Major Chinese Cable Operator Launches On-Demand Services With Espial
MediaBase

Jilin Cable Network Plans Expansion to 3 Million Subscribers

OTTAWA , Feb. 3 /CNW/ - Espial(R) a leading provider of digital TV software and solutions, announced that Jilin Cable Network has selected Espial MediaBase to power their on-demand services. Jilin Cable Network is located in the central part of northeast China and serves three million TV subscribers. Using Espial MediaBase, they already offer Video-On-Demand (VOD), TV On-Demand (TVOD), Network Personal Video Recorder (NPVR) and Timeshift-TV (TSTV) services to hundreds of thousands of subscribers using more than 60 Time-Shift TV channel captures.

Jilin Cable Network is planning an aggressive expansion and will offer these on-demand services to their entire base of 3 million subscribers over the next several years. They believe the excellent user experience enabled by Espial MediaBase will be a key differentiator for their subscribers. For example, Espial MediaBase can capture live TV and make it available for almost instant viewing (for catch-up or look-back TV services) after the broadcast begins.

As part of its selection process, Jilin Cable Network also required a VOD system that could work with limited backbone network bandwidth. With Espial MediaBase, they were able to address this requirement with its multi-tiered, multicast content delivery networking features. As well, it was essential that the VOD system can be tailored - both at the software and hardware layers - to the number of subscribers and viewing habits of each region. With its flexible licensing model and by using commerical-off-the-shelf (COTS) servers and storage, Espial MediaBase easily met this requirement. This combination of features allows Jilin Cable Network to reliably, cost-effectively and efficiently distribute content and provide on-demand TV services to users in several cities including Jilin, Yanji, and Changchun. A final important consideration was that the VOD system works with their preferred system integrator - this was met as Espial MediaBase is tightly integrated with Huawei's Business Management Solution for Cable Operators.

"We selected Espial MediaBase for its excellent track record and history powering IPTV and cable operators across the world. It offers excellent cost to performance; ease of installation and operations; a rich set of applications including NPVR, TSTV and VOD; and, is tightly integrated with and locally supported by Huawei, our preferred integrator. Using Espial MediaBase we can attract new subscribers today and differentiate against our competition for the future," Mr. H. F. Zhang . " We're pleased to have a highly reliable and scalable product we can use to expand our services into the future."

"Jilin Cable's Network selection of Espial MediaBase was based on its high performance, excellent scalability and broad set of on-demand services. As well, by using off-the-shelf hardware, Espial was able to tailor the server and storage exactly to their requirements for each service region. These are essential capabilities to meet China's digital TV market requirements," said James Chou , Espial, Country Manager, Great China and Director of Sales, Asia. "It is a privilege for Espial to work with Jilin Cable Network to deliver a leading digital TV service to their consumers."

ABOUT JILIN CABLE NETWORK

Jilin Cable Network is located in the central part of northeast China and serves three million TV subscribers with Internet, analog TV and digital TV services. It has provincial government and SARFT approval to offer next-generation digital cable services to its subscribers. It is the first operator to deploy LiveTV, VOD, TVOD, nPVR, TSTV and other value-added services in Jilin province.

About Espial MediaBase

Espial MediaBase (formerly branded as Kasenna MediaBase XMP) is an intelligent content delivery platform powering VOD, Timeshift TV, Network PVR and other lucrative services in the cable, telecommunications, and enterprise and hospitality industries. It is a robust, highly-scalable software system for managing, distributing and delivering video on-demand content for IPTV, hybrid IP and other video services. Using off-the-shelf servers, it is easily customized to support small to very large deployments. Combining multi-tiered networking, intelligent content delivery and wide ecosystem support, it ensures operators can deliver and maintain their VOD projects on-time and on-budget.

About Espial (www.espial.com)

Espial is a leading supplier of high performance and open digital TV software to service providers in the cable, telecommunications, hospitality and consumer electronics industries. Its middleware, video-on-demand and browser solutions provide superior service delivery, advanced service innovation tools and the flexibility to implement diverse pay-TV business models. Over 7 million licenses of its patented software are in use across the world. Espial is headquartered in Ottawa , Canada and has offices in the United States , Europe and Asia. For more information please call +1.613.230.4770 or visit www.espial.com.

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For further information: Media Contact: Espial: Kirk Edwardson, Director of Marketing, [phone] x 1145