Comcast Media Center has launched a newly rebuilt origination and playout facility to handle all of InDemand's live sports and pay-per-view content, located in the CMC's 305,000-square-foot building at the Denver Tech Center.
InDemand's new facility consolidates the operational processes for sports and PPV programming into one master control operation, which provides flexibility for adding on-screen features, such as sports statistics, event replays, and personalized messaging concerning rain delays or other developments affecting programming from live event venues.
Each year, the CMC supports InDemand's delivery of nearly 7,000 live sports feeds, representing more than 20,000 hours of sports package content and PPV events. PPV programming includes movies, boxing and mixed martial arts events and the digital out-of-market subscription professional sports packages for Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League and Major League Soccer.
"The CMC has played an integral role in supporting InDemand's operations over the past 12 years," InDemand chief technology officer John Vartanian said in a statement. "With CMC as our partner, we are committed to guaranteeing our affiliates the most advanced technology available and a completely customized, reliable, state-of-the-art facility. This new upgrade enables us to continue to deliver a high volume of live sports and entertainment programming to our customers with the highest technical quality."
Added Richard Buchanan, CMC vice president and general manager of content services, "InDemand's new origination environment with the CMC reflect the outstanding collaborative work conducted over the years by our engineering and network teams, which have been responsible for delivering thousands of hours of live sports and movies to cable affiliates."
As part of a recently renewed content services agreement, the CMC provides InDemand with an end-to-end content management solution for its channels, including multichannel network origination, traffic management, live sports event integration and transmission.
InDemand is owned by Comcast, Cox Communications and the Time Warner Entertainment - Advance/Newhouse Partnership.
