What Is Cablecast?

Cablecast is an audiovisual headend management system for television stations. It is capable of managing many aspects of your station’s life, including: program information, schedules, routing switchers, digital video servers, public web schedule output, reports, video on demand servers, live streaming servers, TV Guide X-List output and Carousel schedule display. It is the automation and back office system for your headend operations.

Through its web interface, Cablecast gives your staff the tools they need to program their entire audiovisual headend.

There are several hardware and software components that together comprise a working Cablecast system.

Software Components:

  • Frontdoor : Frontdoor provides user login, security settings, user rights assignment and related functions. Frontdoor is a web application that you will log in to whenever you want to access Cablecast.
  • Cablecast Web User Interface : The Cablecast Web User Interface is the heart of your Cablecast system. Depending on your configuration, the Cablecast Web Interface may be hosted by your video server, or on a separate server.
  • Cablecast: Cablecast is the core software behind the functionality of your system. It houses the show records, show schedule, configurations for your various devices, helps serve livestreams / video on demand and controls video switchers.
  • Cablecast CG: CablecastCG is what controls and renders your Bulletin Board content between programs. It can be configured with static content, images, dynamic content, crawls, background audio and much more.

Hardware Components:

  • Cablecast Server : We call the server that is running the Cablecast Web User Interface the Cablecast Server. Depending on your configuration, the Cablecast Server might be the same physical computer as one or more of the following devices.
  • VOD Server : The VOD server is responsible for transcoding video files so that your viewers can watch them on demand from your website. The server also stores all of the resulting transcoded files.
  • Video Server : The video server is responsible for recording and playback of digital media files.
  • Live Streaming Server : The live streaming server encodes your final channel output in an Internet-friendly format. The resulting stream can be displayed on your website so that your viewers can watch your channel online.
  • Live Sources : Beyond the playback devices already described, you might have additional sources that are used for live events.