| MUMBAI: US sports broadcaster ESPN has struck
a deal with GlobeCast, a global content management and delivery company, to deliver
ESPN Classic, the company’s first UK-dedicated sports channel, to the Sky
Digital platform. Launched this week using Globecast’s capacity on the
Eurobird satellite, ESPN Classic is devoted entirely to the greatest moments and
legends of sport with a mix of all-time classic highlights, matches, movies, interviews,
profiles and documentaries.
GlobeCast’s solution
for ESPN includes connectivity from the broadcaster’s playout facility in
West London to GlobeCast, where the feed is encoded, multiplexed then sent to
GlobeCast’s Brookmans Park teleport for uplink to the Sky Digital platform
using GlobeCast’s Eurobird capacity. ESPN Classic is available 24 hours a
day on Sky’s EPG channel 442. GlobeCast has an established relationship
with ESPN Classic, providing a content and delivery services for the channel’s
existing French, Italian and European feeds via Astra at 19.2ºE, Hotbird
at 13ºE and Sirius 2 4.8ºE respectively. Globecast is a subsidiary
of France Telecom. It is a global content management and delivery company. Via
its worldwide satellite and fibre network, the company manages and transports
10 million hours of video and other rich media yearly for its core customer base
of broadcasters, as well as corporate, government and retail clients. Globecast
is network agnostic and ingests once to deliver content to any network via multiple
platforms, including direct-to-home satellite, cable, video-to-mobile, IPTV/video-over-ADSL,
desktop broadband, and more. The company's global presence includes 15 teleports
and technical operations centres throughout Europe, America, Asia, Africa, the
Middle East and Australia. | 
