By switching to a direct satellite link into the local servers of the hotels, Locatel is simplifying the on-demand video delivery process, and expanding the range of titles available to customers.

Locatel currently provides the equipment for customers to deliver audiovisual and multimedia services to 135,000 hotel rooms and 70,000 hospital beds.

Until now, access to movies has been based on a pay-per-view system, with a choice of four films broadcast at a fixed time each day, as well as a selection of video players made available for communal use at each client location, with films delivered to hotels on VHS.

"Thanks to satellite delivery and to local storage of the films in digital format, every customer can now watch the program of his or her choice on a video-on-demand basis, with full freedom to watch whenever they choose and to interrupt the film as often as needed.

Eighteen films will now be available full-time - four times more than what we offer today," says Guillaume Deguerry, Export Director for Audiovisual Hotel and Health Services at Locatel.

Every ten days, two new films will be sent to all of Locatel's client hotels in compressed MPEG 2 format via a signal uplinked from Eutelsat's platform in Rambouillet (France) to the ATLANTIC BIRD(tm) 2 satellite. Using routing and distribution software developed by Castify Networks Systems (Castify EBN) to encrypt the signal and manage delivery, the content will be received simultaneously by all digital servers at the hotels.

The receive equipment includes a 35" parabolic antenna, connected to a local server equipped with the Castify EBN client software which manages access rights.

The Castify EBN software also checks that content has been fully received, and uses the redundant data to reconstitute any missing elements if necessary before storing the content at the hotel on the local server.

Olivier Milli¿s-Lacroix, Director of Products and Sales for Eutelsat, sees the agreement with Locatel as a perfect illustration of the appeal of satellites to companies that need to transmit audio, video, and multimedia content to multi-site networks.

"By combining satellite capabilities to broadcast to wide audiences with secure routing and distribution features, we can enable Locatel to switch to a fully automated method of delivering and storing the content it rents out to its customers.

Satellite also offers high-speed delivery of bandwidth-intensive video files, which is especially important for those hotels that are located at some distance from terrestrial ADSL or cable networks."

"By the end of 2003, we will have equipped our first 50 hotels with this new capability, targeting both new and existing customers," added Guillaume Deguerry. "By switching to this digital format, we can substantially simplify the process of updating the range of programs we offer, and, above all, we can apply new technologies to enhance the quality of service we offer our customers."

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