Stockholm, Sweden – Oct 27, 2020 – Edgeware has today announced that izzi, Mexico’s largest cable TV operator, will expand its existing Edgeware TV CDN platform with the addition of new OCR subtitling features for its izzi TV service. This will enable them to add Spanish subtitles on the fly across 75 channels, ensuring full support for accurately displayed subtitles on all devices and content. It will also allow viewers to activate and deactivate subtitles as they wish.

TV subtitles are traditionally delivered as images or bitmaps, which work well for conventional set-top boxes, but are not supported by OTT streaming formats like HLS, MPEG-DASH and MSS. The OCR subtitling solution from Edgeware makes subtitling easy by using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to automatically and instantly transcode DVB bitmap subtitles to text-based subtitle formats. This enables accurate and high-quality subtitles to be prepared for any format that is needed for multi-device OTT delivery – to any client, in any screen size and in any language.

“Being able to provide accurate and robust subtitling across a range of formats and device types is an important requirement for our service,” said Carlos Eduardo Romero, Video and Hubs Director at izzi. “By enhancing the accessibility of our content, we’re able to offer our customers a more engaging, higher-quality experience and support the future growth of our OTT content delivery.”

“izzi’s deployment highlights the strategic importance of Edgeware’s acquisition of subtitling experts Cavena last year, as we strive to develop technology for internet-enabled TV services beyond broadcast,” said Johan Bolin, chief product and technology officer at Edgeware. “As OTT services continue to attract more and more end users, subtitling must be at the same high quality as it is for traditional broadcast viewing – and be delivered across all screens. Furthermore, subtitling is increasingly important to facilitate new user behaviour. With more people watching TV on the go, and therefore in noisy environments, it’s essential for subtitles to complement the audio and enhance the viewing experience.”

izzi is a long-time Edgeware customer that continuously refines and modernizes its services to offer even greater value to its customers. In its most recent expansion in 2018, izzi added improved time-shift TV services to its TV CDN platform from Edgeware for more than 500,000 subscribers, enabling viewers to pause and rewind up to three hours of live TV.

“This new deployment marks another step forward in our long-standing relationship with izzi, which has quickly established itself as one of the most innovative TV operators around,” said Carlos Fidalgo, VP of Sales Latin America at Edgeware. “It also provides yet another example of how content providers can’t afford to stand still in their mission to meet ever-increasing customer demands and provide an enhanced viewing experience.”

About izzi
izzi is a Mexican telecommunications company owned by Grupo Televisa and operated by Empresas Cablevisión, S.A.B. de C.V. izzi provides telephone, Internet, and cable TV services to individuals and companies. Its services are available in more than 60 cities in 29 states of Mexico, with a network that covers over 30,000 kilometers (19,000 mi) of optic fiber and 77,000 km (48,000 mi) of coaxial cable.

About Edgeware
Edgeware supplies operators and content providers with systems to deliver modern TV services over the Internet at a huge scale. Edgeware’s unique technology provides an outstanding viewing experience that allows its customers to retain control of their content. Edgeware has more than 200 customers and is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, with staff across Europe, Asia and the Americas.
For more information, please visit www.edgeware.tv

Edgeware media contact:
Astrid Hveding Lengdell, VP Marketing
astrid.lengdell@edgeware.tv

The information was submitted for publication, through the agency of the contact person set out above, at 07:30 CET on Oct 27, 2020.