SmartJog to increase its global digital cinema distribution on Intelsat 905

CinemaCon - Las Vegas (April 23, 2012) – SmartJog unveiled today at CinemaCon, the annual convention of the motion picture exhibition industry, that it plans to double its satellite capacity over Europe. The multi-year agreement with Intelsat S.A., the world’s leading provider of satellite services, is for distribution of digital cinema services on Intelsat 905 at 335.5°East to customers in Europe.

This agreement reaffirms SmartJog’s role as a global leader in managed digital cinema distribution services. Currently, SmartJog delivers an average of 40,000 Digital Cinema Packages (DCPs) each month via Intelsat 905 to SmartJog’s network of more than 800 cinemas and 3,000 screens in 13 countries across Europe.

“With a second full time satellite transponder, we will have an aggregated throughput of 140 Mbps available for delivery to cinemas once the upgrade is completed with dual tuner DVB-S2 cards,” said Jean-Sebastien Petit, CEO of SmartJog. “This will enable speedy delivery of four to six large feature film DCPs per day, at an average of 60 gigabits per hour.”

“Intelsat continues to support the growth of SmartJog’s business as they develop innovative approaches to delivering non-linear content via our satellite network,” said Kurt Riegelman, SVP of global sales for Intelsat.  “This agreement will allow SmartJog to reach new audiences across Europe and greatly expand its viewership on Intelsat 905.”

SmartJog and Intelsat have also jointly developed digital distribution solutions that are scalable for SmartJog’s potential strategic partners in other markets, such as the Americas and Asia. SmartJog recently announced a new licensing and white-label product and service model available for third party digital cinema network operators.

Julien Seligmann, director of media services at TDF, the parent company of SmartJog, concludes, “Our agreement with Intelsat is key to our success as a global digital cinema distribution solutions leader. TDF is committed to supporting the growing need for fast and efficient digital cinema satellite delivery services from our customers.”

CineLab becomes the first digital cinema network operator to license SmartJog’s solutions.

Las Vegas and Moscow  (April 16, 2012) - SmartJog and CineLab are pleased to announce that they have reached a long term agreement for the license of SmartJog digital cinema distribution solutions as a white label service and product for the operations of their CineLab Data Delivery Network in Russia and CIS. The agreement was executed after a pilot phase that concluded recently with several multicasts of feature films to cinemas connected to the CineLab Data Delivery Network.

With this announcement, SmartJog, who is a leading operator of a Digital Cinema Network in Western Europe, with over 800 cinemas connected to its satellite and fiber hybrid platform, is launching a global strategy to offer the SmartJog technology and its innovative cloud based solutions to other international licensees worldwide who want to manage and operate their own electronic distribution network for digital cinema, using the best solutions and technology available in the market. The US office of SmartJog in Los Angeles will lead the commercialization of this new line of products.

Under this agreement, SmartJog provides gateway solutions that are hosted on the CineLab servers and NOC applications for CineLab to manage and supervise their network.  In addition, CineLab is sharing resources with SmartJog’s digital cinema network and operations, based in Paris, for commissioning of new sites, traffic monitoring and network supervision. CineLab has been providing DCP mastering services, KDM and physical media delivery to several Russian distributors for three years. Delivery via satellite was a natural extension to their activity and it will simplify availability of digital film content particularly to remote regional cinemas in Russia and neighboring countries.

“CineLab has deployed a digital cinema network which includes today over 200 cinema sites in Russia and Kazakhstan, with a reach to 436 screens and a target to connect all digitized cinemas in Russia and CIS, confirms Denis Glinsky, CEO of CineLab Group. “We are very pleased that with our partnership with SmartJog, along with our recent agreement with RSCC, the national satellite service operator in Russia, we can offer a comprehensive solution using the Express-??2 satellite, with delivery speeds reaching 45 Mb/s, adds Kirill Kuzmenko, CEO of CineLab Digital.”

Jean-Sebastien Petit, CEO of SmartJog explains: “CineLab has been one of the pioneers of digital cinema in Russia and a client of SmartJog since several years for the secure reception of theatrical material from the US Studios via our network. We are thrilled by this partnership.

Nicolas Dussert, VP Digital Cinema Europe adds: “We are glad to have this technical partnership with CineLab. They deploy rapidly, with an average of ten new cinemas each week and our respective teams collaborate in the operations and management of their traffic on their network. We value our partnership and we develop for CineLab new solutions that contribute to our overall Quality of Service, making SmartJog a market leader in electronic distribution solutions and managed value-add services.”

Within the framework of their technical infrastructure modernization project, the CANAL+ Group has chosen SmartJog to manage their digital content exchanges which includes exchanges with all of their suppliers and technical partners in France and Overseas.
SmartJog, a subsidiary of the TDF Group, is a global leader in the management and delivery of digital media content. Using SmartJog’s high speed and secure network allows the CANAL+ Group to optimize media exchanges with their suppliers and technical partners.

The SmartJog solution was implemented as follows:

• Set up dedicated links for the different CANAL+ Group, partners and supplier sites,
• Install the servers necessary to transmit and to receive programs on the premises of all suppliers and technical partners (Play-out centers, post-production laboratories, etc…),
• Customize and integrate automatic file transcoding processes,
• Enable the tracking and management of these exchanges directly from the CANAL+ Group’s internal interfaces.

“Using SmartJog’s state-of-the-art network the CANAL+ Group can rapidly and with minimal costs enjoy the advantages of digital content exchanges. The CANAL+ Group is also benefiting from an innovative business model which takes into consideration the substantial future increase of sites and files exchanged” according to Jean-Sébastien Petit (SmartJog).
“We have been doing business with SmartJog from many years and we are pleased today to be able to integrate their digital architecture in our business operations. Our engineers have been working closely with the SmartJog teams in order to be able to implement the web services necessary for more efficient exchanges from and to our partners and suppliers” explains Christophe Remy-Neris (CANAL+ Group).

SmartJog 10 years celebration

SmartJog is celebrating 10 years as the largest & most trusted digital delivery community. Throughout 2012, SmartJog will be taking the opportunity to revisit the last 10 years as well as look forward to bringing clients more innovative services in 2012.

Read more: SmartJog's Ten Years

Celebrating 10 Years of Innovation in 2012 with a new visual identity!

In an effort to further align ourselves as a proud subsidiary of TDF and in celebration of our 10th Anniversary, we’re excited to announce a new visual identity.  We felt it would be a great way to communicate our strengths as the leading global digital delivery service provider, offering file transfer, digital cinema distribution and CDN services within the TDF Media Services division.

The new logo promotes TDF’s extensive experience in the industry, its commitment to addressing the challenges of today’s technology-focused environment and its ability to provide solutions to meet clients’ needs. SmartJog has been a TDF subsidiary since 2006 and is part of the TDF Media Services Group which also includes BeBanjo, Cognacq-Jay Image, and Qbrick.

Our new identity demonstrates the strength and reliability of the TDF Brand. Starting today and over the next few weeks, SmartJog’s new logo will make its debut on all our documents and interfaces.

VOD content Distribution to StarHub in Singapore, as early as 24 hours after US air date

The Challenge

StarHub, Singapore's leading pay TV operator, offers a full range of information, communications and entertainment services for both consumer and corporate markets. StarHub needed a way to receive full-length television shows from US Studios for its newly launched cable VOD platform.

Considering that much of the content would originate in North America, StarHub wanted a way to cut down on shipping time, where days could be  lost because of the physical shipping  and the time change.  The challenge was to find a solution that would quickly and cost-effectively get the content to Singapore in order to make the program available on the cable  VOD platform within 24 hours after the US air date.

Read more: VOD Distribution in Singapore

File-based delivery of content for the FIFA World Cup 2010 South Africa

 In the previous World Cups and other Special Events, broadcasters had to book and coordinate expensive satellite feeds from location back to their operations centers. The challenge for broadcasters was figuring out how to retrieve and get the non-live content that is a complement to the live coverage of the football matches, such as interviews, press conferences, highlights, trainings and other types of pre-recorded coverage back to the International Broadcast Centre (IBC) and  broadcaster home locations.  There was a need to offer a way to service critical content, with less operational constraint and cost-effectively .

Host Broadcast Services (HBS) who was in charge of media coverage of FIFA  World Cup 2010 South Africa, on behalf of FIFA, wanted to provide broadcasters with a file-based contribution service, both domestically in South Africa and internationally.

Read more: Delivering for World Cup 2010