One copy on the backbone. Whatever the audience.
SmartCast is Viewcast’s delivery layer built on Smart PTMP: origin to global masters to regional masters to endnodes to viewers. One stream crosses the long-distance network however large the audience gets, and fans out only where the audience is.
Scroll the drawing
The path, in order
SmartCast delivers a live stream in four steps: the origin sends one copy to global masters, global masters feed regional masters, regional masters feed endnodes, and endnodes fan out to viewers.
Schematic. Node positions illustrate the hierarchy; they are not an inventory.
The four steps
- Origin: one stream in.
- Global and regional masters: the one copy crosses the long-distance network; adding viewers adds no traffic here.
- Endnodes: the local point near the audience; roughly 1,000 viewers per endnode at 5 Mbps.
- Viewers: the last mile is unchanged; every viewer still receives their own copy of the picture.
What the viewer notices
Because the endnode already carries the stream, tuning in is not a cold fetch from a distant edge: channel switching is immediate, with no buffering on start.
Notes
- The feel of linear television, which is difficult to reproduce on a network that opens a new session for every tune-in.
- Standards-based delivery to ordinary players: HLS, SRT and MPEG-TS output; no special client software is required.
What it costs you, and what it does not
Customers typically save 30% or more on what they currently pay their delivery network, and the saving grows as the audience grows.
Notes
- We price against what the equivalent unicast delivery would cost you, so the bigger your peaks, the wider the gap.
- It works over the ordinary internet, with no cooperation needed from telecoms companies.
Schematic. Not a quotation; your saving depends on your peaks.
Take just the delivery layer
You can take SmartCast on its own: it plugs in as a transparent carve-out behind your existing playout and DRM, typically live in four to six weeks.
Notes
- If it does not perform, you flip the traffic back. That is the entire risk of trying it.
- It is the delivery leg that changes, not your stack. Cloud-agnostic: the fabric runs on AWS, Azure, GCP or bare metal.
- Or run the whole chain in one console with SmartPlay: playout, ad insertion, protection, measurement and monitoring.
Measured, not assumed
Every endnode reports join and leave events over a TLS backchannel, so viewer counts, session durations and geography come from the infrastructure itself, not from browser cookies, tracking pixels or third-party scripts.
Notes
- We describe it as a measurement architecture and nothing more: IP addresses are personal data, and what that means for your consent obligations is a question for your counsel, not a marketing line.
- A 24/7 network operations centre watches every stream, every endnode and every viewer, with per-channel viewer series and a geographic heatmap.
Where it is proven
SmartCast has carried live production traffic since 2018: DanceTV, an independent company and a customer of eight years, runs nine channels around the clock to more than 140 countries on it, per internal analytics.
FlixSnip, a European FAST operator, runs on SmartPlay under a signed contract.
Chart notes
2024 – present · Comcast / Xfinity. Comcast / Xfinity: signed vendor contract; active integration engagement, 2024 to present.
- Years in productionsince 2018
- 8
- Channels, 24/7
- 9
- Countriesper internal analytics
- 140+
- Consecutive production days
- 2,900+
- Uptimeper internal analytics
- 99.97%
Bring two numbers.
Your current delivery bill and your peak concurrency. Those two numbers are enough for us to tell you whether the saving is worth your time, and to tell you if it is not.