Eurovision Song Contest Rocks Audiences Online With Octoshape Infinite Edge

The Eurovision Song Contest put viewers around the world on the edge of their seats as 42 performers battled it out in the Olympic Arena in Moscow.
From the official website of the Eurovision Song Contest - www.eurovision.tv - fans from all over the world could tune in and view the events reliably and in high quality via Octoshape.
Eurovision Song Contest events are followed closely by a large fan base living in every corner of the world. Viewing the event via a live broadcast is not always convenient for all time zones.
This year the Octoshape server side archive feature was used to provide High Quality on-demand playback of the full events. With Instant On and Instant Seek technology, users were able to get a high quality viewing experience whenever they chose to tune in.
Normally, Eurovision Song Contest viewers can only watch the national selection event of their own country, but not for any of the other participating countries as they are national broadcasts only. However, by using Octoshape webcasts, several national selection events could be easily streamed to the world - allowing excited fans to watch this exclusive content, live or on-demand, regardless of the country they live in.
This year's events introduced a number of technology firsts as Octoshape showcased some of their latest features such as Enhanced Flash streaming, a new smooth installation process, and directly published VOD playback.
Nicoletta Iacobacci, Head of the Eurovision TV Interactive Unit, said: "The Octoshape solution provides us with all the features we need to build an enhanced streaming experience for our users. Making our content available to our globally dispersed audience is critical and using Octoshape we can do this while ensuring perfect quality."
Using the infinite edge streaming technology from Octoshape, the Eurovision Song Contest was once again delivered to the viewers without the typical outages that are associated with large scale streaming.
Stephen Alstrup, CEO of Octoshape, said: "We enjoy working with the Eurovision Song Contest as they are constantly pushing the envelope for high quality streaming experiences. Working closely together we are able to cross the traditional barriers for large scale, high quality video delivery online.
"The content and audience composition of the Eurovision Song Contest triggers basically all the major challenges a streaming system can be faced with; extreme load, a global audience and a high quality stream. Octoshape alleviates these challenges, making global streaming simple and enabling this event to be a major success online."
(KMcA/BMcC)