Irish tech firm S3 passes the test stress-free with Sky Deutschland

6 Aug 2013

Sky Deutschland has selected technology made by Dublin-based digital TV services firm S3 to test its ability to deliver multiscreen TV services. S3’s technology lets Sky in Germany stress test its services across 64 devices at a time.

S3’s StormTest Development Center HS64 technology allows Sky to routinely test the robustness of new software releases and product upgrades by simulating real-world usage conditions and capture key performance metrics.

Sky Deutschland serves 3.5m subscribers across Germany and Austria and serves up 69 HD-quality channels, as well as in 3D, not to mention Sky Go and Sky Anytime services.

“We believe this cutting-edge solution further enhances the outstanding quality of our Sky customer premises equipment (CPE) and service,” explained Sky Deutschland’s CPE director Stefan Kastl.

“As we evolve our digital TV platform on a daily basis it is important that we can execute stress, reliability, performance and monitoring testing efficiently on a large number of set-top boxes simultaneously and with different releases at the same time. With StormTest Development Center HS64, we now have the ability to do so across all our DTH and cable set-top boxes.”

S3 has more than 40 broadcast customers in Europe, North America and Asia, including major operators BT Vision, BSkyB, Swisscom and UPC.

Digital TV image via Shutterstock

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com