Satellite communication systems have long been the only commercially available means of distributing media packages to a large number of recipients located across wide geographic areas. While using a transmitter (“pitcher”) to send media packages to multiple satellite receivers (“catchers”) works well on most occasions, it has significant limitations for today’s Internet video demands where delivery times and package integrity are critical. Additionally, the cost to major broadcasters, networks, telecoms and MSOs to operate or purchase satellite delivery services and systems are significant. Consequently, these organizations have explored and begun investing in more affordable solutions for media transport.
Aspera’s Virtual Catcher was developed to fully leverage low-cost, commodity terrestrial IP networks enabled with Aspera’s industry leading FASP technology and solutions. At the heart of the Aspera Virtual Catcher is a set of purpose-built workflows combined with a processing engine for parsing and executing the workflows, configuration screens to customize it to your needs, monitoring views to show status to ensure pitched packages are completely received. Once validated, files are correctly handed off to the recipient’s content management system (CMS). With Virtual Catcher, many receiver sites can automatically ingest large digital media securely and reliably, with a similar process that automatically ingests ADI compliant packages into their asset management systems or downstream systems.
Virtual Catcher allows recipients such as regional MSO’s and local network affiliates to receive digital packages sent from an Aspera server of a major broadcaster or content aggregator. When installed on the receiver side along with an Aspera transfer client (i.e., Cargo or Point-to-Point Client) or an Aspera transfer server, Virtual Catcher can automatically detect and assemble all the components of each individual package using the manifest data, track and confirm the delivery receipt or failure of each package component, and then move the received package to the designated CMS or downstream storage system.
- Significant Cost Savings
- Enables customers to use their existing low cost network infrastructure
- Saves considerable costs incurred by using satellite delivery services
- More Reliable and Predictable Delivery Versus Satellite
- Packages are more reliably sent over terrestrial networks that are not affected by factors like bad weather
- Delayed or interrupted transfers are automatically restarted and resumed from the point of interruption
- Senders receive full confirmation of each package delivered to each target site with notification of all files downloaded by and delivered to each recipient
- Faster with greater bandwidth utilization
- On the sending side, Aspera FASP transfer technology enables a sender to transfer all content packages to its many receivers at maximum speed by fully using all available bandwidth without saturating the network
- On the receiving side, FASP-enabled networks provide greater performance relative to satellite delivery over low bandwidth connections
- Secure file transfers with precise monitoring and control
- Achieve high-speed, robust and reliable transfers with end-to-end progress reporting and performance monitoring
- Precise bandwidth control ensures the entire available bandwidth is utilized to achieve maximum transfer speeds, while being fair to other critical network traffic
- Built-in endpoint authentication, encryption, and data integrity verification
- Operating Systems
- Linux 64 bit: RedHat EL, CentOS 6.x, 7.x
- Windows 64 bit: Windows 7, 8, 10; Windows Server 2008 R2, Server 2012 R2
- Web Browsers
- Firefox 27+
- Google Chrome 32+
