Background: The Saarland Broadcasting Service (SR), with its comprehensive SR 1 Europawelle ("Europe Wave") and SR 3 Saarlandwelle ("Saarland Wave") programmes along with both co-op programmes SR 2 KulturRadio and UnserDing, offers radio programmes to suit every taste. SR 3 is currently only regionally accessible, while the other programmes are broadcast nationwide.
The task: SR wants to make the four radio programmes accessible in the Internet. The live streams are to be realised so that they can only be accessed using the SR web server. Since SR incurs the transfer costs and the station carefully handles subscriber fees, the streams are to be automatically switched off after a predefined time – they can be switched back on at any time and as often as desired. In addition, technical support and help centres are required for users who cannot manage the streams.
Our solution: We realise the reception and encoding at two separate locations: we process the available nationwide programmes in our data centre in Cologne and the SR 3 programme, which is only available locally directly in Saarbrucken. The waves are received redundantly and coded in Real and Windows Media with bandwidths up to 128 kilobit/s.
The CDN from Akamai is used for delivery and the URLs are coded by the Akamai streaming authentication service. A valid call-up address can only be obtained through a SR server. After 90 minutes, the streams are automatically switched off, however, they can be restarted immediately and any number of times.
SR uses our StreamInspector service for the technical support of its end users. We supplement the listener requests and error reports with a qualified technical analysis of their infrastructure, compare the analysis results with our comprehensive knowledge base, and provide support for troubleshooting.
Overview of our services:
• Redundant programme reception and encoding,
• Delivery and streaming authentication through Akamai,
• StreamInspector service for end users.