Greenlight Chooses WISI for DCM Replacement, Headend Monitoring & Analytics


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We first brought in the Inca IP Video Platform to replace equipment for our off-air channels. We ended up replacing 14 pieces of equipment with one Inca chassis, a huge space and power savings.

Greenlight, North Carolina’s community-owned data and video network, chose WISI, a global leader in carrier-grade video delivery solutions, to replace their video processing equipment and power their video headend. The results were substantial; Greenlight significantly reduced rack space and streamlined its video delivery process.

Before deploying WISI’s solution, Greenlight faced the problem of high maintenance end-of-life video equipment.

“We first brought in the Inca IP Video Platform to replace equipment for our off-air channels. We ended up replacing 14 pieces of equipment with one Inca chassis, a huge space and power savings,” said Linwood Tyndall, Infrastructure Engineer at Greenlight.

“I looked to WISI once again when it came time to replace our ageing Cisco DCM D9901,” said Tyndall.

Greenlight subsequently selected WISI’s headend product series to process each step in the video delivery chain and deliver their full channel line-up. The Inca IP Video Platform is used to receive off-air channels and then transrate and transcode both local and national services for delivery. The Tangram Video Platform is used to convert feeds for edge networks, like IP to analog, and multiplex streams for delivery over fiber.

“We are pretty much using WISI through the whole system,” said Tyndall. “We looked at quite a few options for transcoding but nobody else could offer the ease of use and the advanced [user] interface that WISI provides.”

The Inca IP Video Platform is powered by award-winning VidiOS™ management and monitoring tools. The VidiOS™ user interface was designed with visibility in mind to provide an intuitive, user-friendly experience to review video statistics and analysis. Features include inbound and outbound video thumbnails, stream sample downloads, extensive statistical analysis, and end-to-end process logging.

“Other vendors don’t provide the level of analytics and details that the Inca platform provides. You would usually have to use an MPEG analyzer for the details you can easily see in VidiOS™,” said Tyndall. “We found WISI’s UI to be very unique to the market.”

Greenlight also uses WISI’s All Seeing Eye (ASE) product. ASE supports stream monitoring from WISI’s headend solutions and 3rd party equipment to deliver a network-wide visual mosaic of all video streams in a headend.

“ASE saves us a lot of time on troubleshooting and helps us identify issues quickly. It gives us the ability to proactively identify issues before the customer calls them in,” said Tyndall. “Gone are the days of referring to spreadsheets when trying to find the source of an issue in our network.”

“We are happy to be a trusted partner for video providers like Greenlight, who need solid replacement options for ageing equipment. WISI’s carrier-grade products save troubleshooting time, operational costs, and power consumption,” said Sharen Sandhu, VP of Product at WISI. “We pride ourselves on creating intuitive products that make the process of upgrading a headend as smooth as possible.”

To learn more about the Inca and Tangram platforms, please visit http://www.wisi.tv.

About WISI

Founded in 1926, WISI has consistently innovated video reception and distribution technology for nearly 100 years. With customers in more than 150 countries, WISI helps video distributors minimize operating costs while maximizing the scale and efficiency at every point in their network. For more information on WISI’s Inca, Tangram and Chameleon product families, visit http://www.wisi.tv.

About Greenlight

Formed in 2008, Greenlight is the City of Wilson’s community-owned fibre-optic network. In 2013, the City of Wilson became North Carolina’s first Gigabit City when Greenlight responded to the FCC’s gigabit city challenge and began providing gig residential service. Today, Greenlight provides broadband infrastructure to residents, businesses, and institutions in Wilson and the surrounding region. Find out more at greenlightnc.com.

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