Press release from Well Above
The Playroom today announced that it has become an approved aggregator and encoding partner for iTunes in Australia after having gone through a rigorous supply chain management audit process.
The Playroom MD Tom Kennedy explained, “The Playroom has been working with iTunes for over two years and is now expanding our offer and as part of our digital VOD and IPTV services. We also have hired new technology specialists and developed new processes and platforms for iTunes. As a result The Playroom now provides file distribution and aggregation services for iTunes TV sector and have been awarded approved Encoding Partner status too. The quality and excellence levels at which iTunes now accepts partners and suppliers have been raised and thus we had to undertake a strict supply chain management audit process in order to get these accreditations.”
The Playroom has achieved its status with iTunes in part due to the company’s background and experience in broadcast and video production and management.
The Playroom Business Development Director Cora Spear said, “The Playroom’s iTunes aggregation service provides independent content owners the way to monetise their content through iTunes. We also provide the transcoding service to larger content producers with their own iTunes Television account. Our expert and accredited transcode and delivery teams will facilitate ingest, transcode and digital distribution of television content as well as the collection and distribution of any downloads revenue from global and local sales. It is well appreciated that iTunes has very high standards where their partners are concerned and in order to get these accreditations, we had to prove our deep understanding of broadcast and video workflows and our ability to efficiently provide a range of aggregation, encoding and transcoding services.”
According to Spear The Playroom’s approach also allows a wide range of players into the iTunes domain. She added, “iTunes already deal with the major studios but for some of the smaller independent producers an aggregator is needed – that’s where The Playroom comes in. We are also currently working with independent producers and industry bodies to develop to support the grass roots industry even further.”
While The Playroom currently services the television market, according to Tom Kennedy this is set to grow and expand in the near future. He concluded, “We are currently supplying aggregation and encoding services for the television content providers with the film industry squarely in our sights. Our focus is on this new form of digital file delivery and this is very much where we see growth. The Playroom is already providing file receipt rather than tape-based services for Warner Bros. and The Movie Network Channels and a significant number of QC file delivery and receipt services for other content producers. The iTunes aggregation and encoding side of our business looks set to grow significantly throughout 2012 and beyond.”