Slovenia’s STN Taps Elemental for Unified Headend, HEVC Delivery

Satellite Telecommunications Network (STN), based near Ljubljana, Slovenia, is using Elemental video processing solutions to power the unified headend delivery of broadcast and over-the-top (OTT) TV content in high-efficiency video coding (HEVC/H.265) to millions of subscribers on a global scale. STN was recently rated the World Teleport Association (WTA) independent teleport operator of the year for 2016.

STN, which was founded in 2004, has grown significantly to become a global telecommunications hub, or teleport, leader. The privately-owned business, which has scaled from a European to a global customer base and to more than 650 channels in just 11 years, reported a year-over-year revenue increase of 15% in 2015. STN provides a broad portfolio of broadcast and media solutions to clients around the world, including playout, multicast, and uplink. At the core of the company’s offer is an extensive fiber infrastructure which powers the most efficient delivery possible of services to different geographical markets, global CDNs, and for uplink connections in the United States, Hong Kong, Australia, as well as to local satellite dishes in Europe.

“Consumers around the world have a rapidly increasing requirement to consume content in all formats on all platforms. STN is expanding quickly to help our customers meet this demand,” says Tomaz Lovsin, Chief Technical Officer for STN. “The ability of Elemental software to support multiple compression and adaptive bitrate formats within a unified headend for broadcast and OTT delivery is driving massive efficiencies for STN. Choosing technology from Elemental affirms our reputation for using the highest quality.”

STN is working on an expanding project to deliver more than 20 high-definition (HD) channels of general entertainment content for a single client, with the goal of reaching as many screens as possible. To achieve this, STN will use Elemental Live managed by Elemental Conductor to transcode channel content in six different profiles for adaptive streaming. To optimize the workflow for the highest possible quality, feeds from a local playout system will be used. To assure that quality, reliability and security requirements for content delivery networks are met, profiles are published on Elemental Delta origin servers where CDNs can pick up the content for multiscreen OTT delivery.

“Elemental is the last device on a signal path and it can materially affect the image quality,” says Lovsin. “Good compression should deliver video that closely matches the original while simultaneously achieving the smallest bitrate, and this is exactly what Elemental gives us.”

“STN has achieved remarkable success very quickly, because it delivers the highest service standards,” says John Nemeth, Vice President, Field Operations – EMEA for Elemental. “With our HEVC transcoding capability, a core requirement for STN – we are able to deliver quality and efficiency STN requires. Furthermore, Elemental provides a flexible architecture that allows STN to grow rapidly, and to develop new services like high quality OTT and, in the future, Ultra HD.”