2001: ”Blast-from-the-past” blog post

2001 was world-changing. To take you back into the past, 9/11 occurred with the annihilation of the twin towers in New York City, the Human Genome Sequence was revealed, China joined the World Trade Organisation, the U.S launched the Mars Odyssey spacecraft to Mars, and the world witnessed the start of a global economic slowdown. Good and bad news, that was broadcasted to billions of people worldwide, some of which by Octopus.

Despite those events, 2001 marked some significant achievements for Octopus Newsroom. These successes included the development of a MOS connection, 10 Partners, a new automation process, and the introduction of a cost-effective workflow with the ability to see lowres and live feeds directly within Octopus. This was the first-time these features would become available for broadcasters, an innovative advancement that accelerated Octopus demand in India.

One of our first MOS partners was Aveco, back in 2001. Aveco and Octopus provided the automation for our first Indian customer the Aaj Tak news channel. The Hindi language-based channel was founded just one year prior in 2000 and became the most watched 24-hour news channel in India; they use Octopus to this present day.

Also, Octopus introduced an app in 2001, which offered two modes; directly encoding and streaming live feeds or operating under the control of Aveco automation via a direct integration. The Octopus app was automation controlled and could also be used to create Lowres. Moreover, Octopus users could view live streams while working directly within the Octopus system.

Octopus Newsroom is the most trusted NRCS across India and continues to innovate. Since 2001, we have always focused on ensuring that Octopus is easy to learn and use. Moreover, we constructed the system to be agile, to work from multiple locations and to integrate with our partners.

Back in 2001, the Octopus team ensured that people looking to upgrade to Octopus would have a smooth transition with minimal impact on existing technological structures, systematics or employees. Octopus continues to offers an innovative out of the box agile NRCS that will make the transition smooth and cost-effective for any broadcaster and we continue to deliver on our promise to this present day.

Stay tuned for the next ‘Blast-from-the-past‘ blog post on what happened in 2002, as part of our 20th-anniversary story series.