Connect Live enables world renowned brands and organisations to fulfil their vision when it comes to events; facilitating the technology and delivering services such as production, logistics, AV installations and technical hire. Working closely on projects with clients, they pride themselves on delivering above and beyond the required specification.
As a large-scale events company and with a number of high-profile clients, Connect Live needed an IPTV and digital signage platform that was flexible, scalable and could work as a temporary and portable solution. They also wanted to ensure a high-quality service, including the ability to deliver low latency live streams and media content to different device types across their network.
In 2012, Connect Live was selected to deliver live video streams and digital signage content for corporate guests at the London 2012 Olympic Games. The project included 300+ TV screens, many miles of Cat6 and fibreoptic cabling and a full complement of Allied Telesis switch gear; deployed across 4 sites, leveraging the full power of Tripleplay to deliver 24/7 IPTV, Digital Signage and custom way-finding for corporate hospitality facilities at each Olympic location. Tripleplay integrated seamlessly into the project and provided an effective and reliable way to deliver media to multiple endpoints.
Joe Duffield, Managing Director, commented, “both digital signage and IPTV are core technologies for the business. The ability to throw live TV, nVOD streams and full featured digital signage from one central setup is important to us for management of the equipment and ultimately delivers a seamless experience for our clients.”
Complete flexibility at any event
As Connect Live are an events company, every deployment is different so its chosen technology needed to adapt and re-structure depending on the nature of the client site or event it was servicing. Tripleplay’s software centric platform enabled this level of flexibility that was so vital.
Duffield continued, “Due to the unique nature of what we do, flexibility is very important. Using Tripleplay at the core of our network allows us to control and upload all content to one location but then have the freedom to playback on any of our devices.”
This allows Connect Live to have a direct network cable straight in to the back of an LG WebOS screen, utilise the power of a 4k BrightSign box or give the end user complete control of their experience with the Tripleplay Interactive IPTV Portal running on an Amino set top box. There are few hardware restrictions or limitations due to the agile and flexible software-based platform that Tripleplay offers.
Dynamic digital signage for any client
Before using Tripleplay, Connect Live had to deal with the time and cost implications of installing a hardware heavy digital signage solution as well as having to set aside hours for configuration before even getting to site.
“Digital signage was a pain point for us, with each screen needing to be driven by its own computer, running an expensive piece of custom-made software on each machine.” Tripleplay saves Connect Live valuable time when it comes to setting up the digital signage and IPTV network on site; vital for events with often extremely tight deadlines.
“Achieving this in the past would have taken a lot of coax cables and expensive distribution amplifiers to achieve and would have meant that each screen would have needed changing individually or all screens would have had to show the exact same thing, not really a seamless experience for the guests.”
Joe Duffield summarised, “We are very happy with the Tripleplay platform, and the upgrades that we have received has seen some much-appreciated user interface tweaks and support for even more player types.
“This truly makes Tripleplay our one stop shop, a solution and fit we have yet to find anywhere else in the market. Having a system that all our technicians can easily drive and an end product that looks and feels premium, means that Tripleplay really has become our go to solution for all our large-scale deployments. We have even installed Tripleplay throughout our own office and warehouse facilities which is a testament to how much we value and rate the platform.”
