Forcetech

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186 187TELE-audiovision International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine — 07-08/2013 — www.TELE-audiovision.com www.TELE-audiovision.com — 07-08/2013 — TELE-audiovision International — 全球发行量最大的数字电视杂志
• offering technically mature and fully-fledged IPTV
solutions
• large Chinese movie provider as showcase customer
and shareholder
• small-scale IPTV systems can be realised on a tight
budget
• excellent video quality thanks to P2P technology
IPTV Systems
by Forcetech
Forcetech is based in the
ZhongGuanCun software park in
northwestern Beijing. 40 software
engineers and ten sales experts
work at this site. An additional R&D
office is located in Chengdu, where
the local university offers a top-
notch engineering degree program.
Forcetech operates one more office
in Shenzhen, since it sources OEM
hardware such as encorders and set-
top boxes from there.
COMPANY REPORT IPTV Solution Provider Forcetech, China

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ëBeijing
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188 TELE-audiovision International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine — 07-08/2013 — www.TELE-audiovision.com
A friendly welcome
by the Forcetech
receptionist.
Hello
World!
IPTV is steadily gaining popularity, as it
gives small and even tiny content provid-
ers a platform for offering their services
on a truly global scale. The question that
arises is: Where can you turn to for a
fully-fledged IPTV solution? Force-tech is
a company that has the answer. It offers
everything you require in terms of soft-
ware for managing an IPTV offering as
well as hardware such as IPTV boxes for
clients. Forcetech is based in northern
Beijing, and we visited the company
to find out what it’s made of.
The Chinese capital Bei-
jing is home to countless
software businesses, and
a number of well-known
companies have chosen
the northwestern part of
the metropolis, close to
the Xierqu station of metro line 13 as
a place to do business. Baidu (the Chi-
nese counterpart of Google) has its huge
headquarters right around the corner,
and a bustling location like that is just
the right place for an innovative company
like Forcetech. Lan Haidong is in charge
of marketing at Forcetech and gives us
a brief company overview. “Forcetech
CEO Mr. Arojoy Wei founded Forcetech in
the year 2004. He had studies computer
technology at university and has always
M1905 is the name
of the online portal
operated by CCTV-6.
Not only does CCTV-6
use Forcetech software
for its online movie
service, it also has
a shareholding in
Forcetech.
COMPANY REPORT IPTV Solution Provider Forcetech, China

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190 TELE-audiovision International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine — 07-08/2013 — www.TELE-audiovision.com
Lan Haidong is the
Marketing Manager at
Forcetech. The official
name of the company
is Force Innovation
Technology Co., Ltd.
as can be seen in the
background.
shown persistent interest in streaming
systems.”
Together with his staff of eight, six of
which were software engineers at the
time, Forcetech CEO Mr. Arojoy Wei de-
signed streaming software for commer-
cial applications during the initial phase
of his company. State-run institutions
such as schools and universities as well
as industrial enterprises ranked among
his first customers. Forcetech software
was implemented on the websites of
those customers for streaming video
content. Lan Haidong gives the example
of “lectures at schools and universities”
that could be accessed online for viewing
at home.
At the time, all streaming software was
based on so-called multicast technol-
ogy, which means every client received
his or her stream directly from a central
content server. Things changed in 2008,
when Forcetech launched a P2P (peer-
to-peer) version of its software. What
was different from then on? With P2P all
connected streaming clients at the same
time function as active multipliers and
forward the received signal to additional
clients. Lan Haidong: “P2P improves the
quality of the received signal, above all.”
Signals need not be fed from a central
server any longer, but can be received
The Forcetech Sales team with TELE-audiovision editor-in-chief Alexander Wiese: (from
left to right) Sales Manager Ren Nan, Sun Wenya, Marketing Manager Lan Haidong, Wang
Qinghua, Dong Peng and Guo Tianwei.

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192 193TELE-audiovision International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine — 07-08/2013 — www.TELE-audiovision.com www.TELE-audiovision.com — 07-08/2013 — TELE-audiovision International — 全球发行量最大的数字电视杂志
1. Meet Peng Dong. He is one of the
software engineers and works on
optimising the user interface of Forcetech
software.
2. Liu Ming is the Development Manager for
Android systems.
3. Wang Yong is the Development Manager
for Linux systems.
from another client close-by.
In its first years of existence, Forcet-
ech was a strictly Chinese company,
which means that only customers within
China were able to order from Forcetech.
The year 2011 saw a major change in
that strategy, mainly thanks to the ad-
vent of CCTV-6 as a major shareholder.
CCTV-6 is a movie channel that is avail-
able all across China and which created
its own Internet offspring by the name
of M1905 (www.m1905.com). Hundreds
of movies can be accessed through that
portal, some of which are available even
before their screening date on TV. This,
of course, presented an ideal opportu-
nity for Forcetech to prove its streaming
software’s worth. Lan Haidong has some
impressive facts for us: “M1905 has two
million subscribers and an average of
400.000 prime time viewers that simul-
taneously access movies from M1905. At
those peak times the required bit rate is
in excess of 100 GB per second.”
Lan Haidong adds even more interest-
ing details: “Each server is capable of
taking care of up to 1000 clients, which
means that for M1905 we adjusted our
streaming software to handle more than
400 serves simultaneously.” With China
being such a huge country, servers are
spread out all over the nation in so-called
data centers. “We have some 50 data
centers in the whole of China.” This way
each single client can be guaranteed the
best possible video quality.
Thanks to new shareholder CCTV-6
Forcetech could finally cast an eye on the
international market as well. “Our soft-
ware product has currently reached an
extremely sophisticated level and with
M1905 we have a brilliant showcase for
our solution, which lends prove to our
claim that we can easily deal with a huge
number of clients.” Within only a short
time Forcetech was able to significantly
increase overseas sales. “Today we gen-
erate 40% of our total turnover outside
China.” Recalling the initial phase of over-
seas business, Lan Haidong remembers
that the first overseas orders came from
Spain and Thailand and adds that Thai-
land, in particular, has shown a strong
demand for Forcetech IPTV software
ever since.
What is it that Forcetech can actu-
ally provide? “We offer an end-to-end
solution for IPTV, and by that we mean
streaming software, software for moni-
toring the stream, management software
for subscriber administration, encoders
for feeding video signals into the system
and of course IPTV boxes at the clients’
end.” The other question is the one about
money. Once again, Lan Haidong has all
the details: “A mini system for approxi-
mately 100 subscribers will set you back
USD 20.000 at most, plus 15 to 20% of
that amount per year for service und
software updates. If you need to accom-
modate 1000 subscribers you’re looking
at one-off costs of around USD 75.000.”
Who wouldn’t want to set up their own
IPTV system with competitive prices like
that? As a matter of fact, TELE-audiovi-
sion will test a Forcetech IPTV solution
first hand and you’ll be able to read what
we think of the system in one of the up-
coming issues. Forcetech has definitely
tapped into a lucrative market segment
and major IPTV operator M1905 clearly
underpins the level of excellence Force-
tech’s software has reached.

Forcetech

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