Top 10 FAST Playout Solutions

FAST Playout Solutions are a minefield for broadcasters and content owners alike. So what are the main features required to make your channel stand out above the rest and make it easy to create and monetize your FAST Channel creation?

FAST Channel Playout should not be a term; Playout creates linear TV, and the audiences loved how playout was delivered before, and the audience did not think it needed changing. FAST delivery brings some advantages, higher quality for less spending, more significant revenues per viewer per hour, and live audience measurement for intelligent content purchasing and curation. However, any playout could have delivered that of old.

FAST Playout Features

The top features that FAST Playout needs to provide an experience that audiences want to watch and advertisers want to be associated with are:

1. The Playout needs to support 1080HD at 8Mbps.
2. The playout solution should not be scheduled VOD as this provides a youtube playlist-like experience.
3. The playout software needs to support static and animated channel bugs/logos.
4. The playout software should support now and next, squeezebox and timed graphics.
5. The playout solution should provide an EPG that mimics traditional TV to start at the top and bottom of the hour.
6. The playout solution should transcode to the various bitrates at the point of broadcast to provide flexibility in the distribution to other platforms.

“If it does not look like a TV channel it is not a TV Channel, VoD schedulers do not cut it in the FAST Broadcast World”

TV AUDIENCE EVERYWHERE – 2022

Top 10 FAST Playout Solutions

The solutions below are unbias and have been taken from feedback by existing and previous solution customers and users.

10 – WURL – 32%

Very popular with content owners, they made a lot of money by selling the dream around connector fees. The playout is not true, but their distribution network and ad-fill scenarios are very popular.

9 – EVRIDEO – 42%

EVRIDEO is one of the first FAST playout solutions. Still, it can take more than 3 days of effort to schedule a standard output week, and graphics are only available via the support team with no online designer.

Poor name and poor system but with a gold star price tag and no monetization tools.

8 – Cinegy – 42%

To be submitted

7 – TBC – 42%

To be submitted

6 – Grass Valley – 49%

Expensive but produces some of the major cable channels of today, a must if you are going for >$10m revenues but a sledgehammer to crack a nut on fireplace TV.

5 – TBC – 42%

To be submitted

4 – TVU Playout – 62%

A newly developed system with FAST roll-out but no monitoring around SCTE-35 tag suggest and still no monetization tools.

3 – TBC – 42%

To be submitted

2 – Amagi – 82%

Amagi is expensive and slow but certainly delivers channels that look like cable and satellite, plus they have major brands using their tech. Great Ad fill following, although the tech fails to deliver true first-party data integration.

1 – View TV Play – GPU Private Cloud Playout – 94%

View TV Play is an OTT Playout solution designed and redeveloped because the KAPANG platform became fed up with playout providers not delivering channels audiences enjoyed. Cloudie TV is one of the only layouts delivered on dedicated GPU hardware per client with up to 4K support. Cloudie TV now delivers channels resembling Cable and satellite channels for less than $50k/year, providing game-changing revenues for SME audiences.

Cloudie TV allows you to schedule a 25 unique hour 24/7 FAST playout channel in less than 4 hours.