Keen to keep rights holders happy, Go Malta has upgraded its playout infrastructure for the sake of its eight live sports channels. Imagine Communications is the new suiter, knocking Bulgaria’s Playbox out of the contract with its highly scalable Versio playout platform and the ADC automation technology.

With Go’s old playout system from Playbox reaching the end of its lifecycle, the operator was looking for a more flexible, scalable alternative. While the Imagine system offers no radical change for end users, Martin Abela, Senior Manager of Video Operations at Go Malta tells Faultline that Go’s backend has undergone a complete makeover.

The old Playbox system required Go to have a separate  workstation for each channel, with operatives having to manually move desks and screens if they were to switch from channel to channel. Not only was this disjointed system physically inconvenient, but it racked up huge data center real  estate, as each channel required its own server.

Individual key video mouse (KVM) switches were needed to log into each server, creating a very rigid workflow. Imagine’s  system, however, allows Go to manage multiple channels within one workstation. “It takes up less space in our server cabinets, and is more power efficient overall,” argued Abela.

This has also made redundancy protocols far easier to  implement. If one channel goes down, Go has up to four backups available spread across two servers. Two of these channels are serving the eight sports channels shared with rival operator Melita, while the other two are acting as back-ups for Go-exclusive movie channels.