Italy’s Chili launches UHD service with Thomson technology

Italian OTT TV service provider Chili has launched an Ultra HD service as part of its movie offering.

Chili is using Thomson Video Networks’ ViBE VS7000 encoder platform and NexGuard content protection to provide ultra HD movies and TV shows to its subscribers.

Fastweb spin-off Chili’s OTT TV service, which has been rolled out in Italy, Poland, Austria, Germany and the UK, provides VoD movies and electronic sell-through content via multiple devices. The operator is using the ViBE VS7000 multi-screen and HEVC encoding platform to deliver premium HEVC 4K content via its movie service.

Chili’s online streaming service reaches more than 460,000 consumers worldwide. The service launched in Poland in December last year, with Austrian and German launches following in January and March 2015 respectively.

Chili was named as a Samsung smart TV UHD partner last year, along with a handful of other providers.

Chili was founded and is led by former Fastweb CEO Stefano Parisi as chairman and chief strategy officer with his former Fastweb colleague Giorgio Tacchia serving as CEO.

“As Ultra HD screens start to permeate the marketplace, there is greater and greater demand for 4K content to fill them. Putting a system in place that lets us deliver Ultra HD movies and TV series to all Internet-connected devices is critical to our business, because it’s all about giving our customers the best quality,” said Stefano Flamia, chief technology officer of Chili. “We chose the ViBE VS7000 encoder because it integrates all of the latest enabling technologies — HEVC, MPEG-DASH, and CENC — for Ultra HD delivery. Combined with session-based watermarking from Civolution, the system gives us the perfect foundation on which to build our Ultra HD services.”