Live streaming your Tv channel globally by Purple Turtle

Purple Turtle was approached by Nigerian Church Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries asking us to look at how we could help them take their existing satellite television channel to viewers outside of Africa without the high costs of extra satellite coverage would carry. At this stage streaming was not very popular as bandwidth was not really into Africa yet however USA and UK bandwidth was not an issue. Live streaming of satellite TV channel was the focus

Their specific requirements:

Streaming of their channel viewable globally
Ability to view on all devices
Quick easy user experience
High quality no buffering
Maintain their branding throughout
Low-cost solution preferred

Challenges

Low bandwidth in Africa for viewing as well as streaming to push to CDN
Many mobile devices on the market, how to target them all
Promoting the streaming online to reach more viewers
Quality of stream

Solution

Purple Turtle recognised the challenges of streaming in the Africa market due to users having low bandwidth but recognised this will improve as will the higher bandwidth in the USA and UK. The Purple Turtle online streaming, online broadcasting CDN solution was selected.

Rather than optimise the streaming for the slowest connections we opted to deploy smart adaptive bitrate streaming which would deliver the best viewing experience to the viewer based on their internet connection thus almost reducing buffering and breaking up of the stream. This ensures that quality is not compromised by slower internet in Africa and ensured those with bandwidth got quality. We further optimised each stream quality to ensure we got the very best encoding option for each to maximise bandwidth fully. As a further option to offer those with bandwidth higher quality yet without extra expense to the client we supplied a subscription option whereby the user pays for their high quality stream and not the client, this helps the client keep the free streaming free.

Pushing the stream to the CDN was done via redundant fibre networks to ensure maximum uptime from our Cape Town operations. We currently achieve 99.8% network uptime on average on our streaming and 99.99% internal systems uptime.

The streaming was made available on the client’s website with an interactive screen where users could comment along with the live stream as well as having access to other tools like an online bible.

Users also had an option to use the smart user interface as a free or paid users. This smart Purple Turtle Middleware increased the viewing experience and took a full TV like experience to all devices without the need for a custom application. Further our system is intelligent and scales to screen so gives a uniform view on all devices. Smart TV’s and other devices were not left out as well as it offered the client full support for PC, Mac, Ipad, Android, LG Smart TV and more without any complicated setups.

Results

The viewership stats speak for themselves, the TOP2 viewing regions were no surprise UK and USA but 3rd was Nigeria. This was proof that it is working even if it is just the slower stream.

Interactivity during their events where users could chat and interact was a hit and included viewers in the live events in a new way that made them feel part of the event even though they were thousands of miles away and behind a pc. Viewership is over 14 000 per month and continues to grow.

For more detailed info on this project and others please contact us directly