Posted by Derrick on January 12, 2010 under Video Streaming and Compression | 
Inlet Technologies, the leader in innovative solutions for digital media preparation, announced that 2009 was a year of record growth, with 2009 revenues 140% higher than 2008. Inlet’s success can be attributed in large part to several first-to-market innovations, the addition of over 150 new customers, and high demand for its streaming solutions across many industries, including the public sector.
Inlet continued its practice of first-to-market innovations with several major developments in 2009. The company was one of the first encoding technology providers to publicly demonstrate and support live streaming to the Apple® iPhone™. In March, Inlet was the first to announce live and VoD support for the Microsoft IIS7 Smooth Streaming platform. Inlet’s Spinnaker encoders now support adaptive streaming solutions from all of the major market players, including Microsoft’s Smooth Streaming, Adobe’s Dynamic Streaming, and HTTP streaming to the Apple iPhone.
Further market-leading innovations include recent upgrades to the Armada video-on-demand workflow management system, and to the Fathom encoding platform, allowing for Microsoft IIS Smooth Streaming for VC-1 and providing Microsoft PlayReady digital rights management support for Smooth Streaming. The latest Armada release also allows for Apple iPhone adaptive bitrate encoding and segmentation, among other additions.
Inlet added more than 150 new customers in 2009, and powered the live and on-demand streaming of many of the world’s most prestigious events, including: Roland Garros French International and The Championships, Wimbledon tennis tournaments; the Indy 500 motor race; Major League Baseball; the National Hockey League; and UniversalSports.com events; Home Shopping Network; TV 2 HD premium television; and GameSpot E3 content. Additionally, shipments of Inlet’s Spinnaker live streaming appliances were up approximately 150% in 2009.
“Given our impressive growth, customer successes, and other technology innovations over the past year, Inlet has emerged as the de facto provider of encoding solutions to enable live and on-demand streaming of content for three screens – web, mobile and STB,” said Don Bossi, chairman and CEO, Inlet Technologies. “We will continue to redefine online video by building cohesiveness between traditional and new media that will allow our customers to easily reach their dynamic audiences with more unique and personalized experiences.”
Posted by Derrick on November 4, 2009 under Video Streaming and Compression |
BlackArrow, a leading worldwide provider of advanced advertising solutions for New Television platforms, announced that its video-on-demand (VOD) ad insertion platform has gone live in Jacksonville, Florida with Comcast Corporation, the nation’s leading provider of entertainment, information and communication products and services. Comcast has chosen BlackArrow’s Advanced Advertising System to lead its ad insertion technology for its On Demand programming.
BlackArrow’s Advanced Advertising System gives programmers and cable operators a real-time, multiplatform campaign management and decision system for offering more timely and relevant ads in their On Demand sessions. Traditionally, advertising campaigns in video-on-demand content have had limited effectiveness due to the static nature of the ads being encoded directly into the VOD stream. In the Jacksonville market, Comcast is inserting standard 15- and 30-second promotional spots as well as newly introduced 20-second spots designed to drive tune-in for upcoming shows and specials on PBS KIDS Sprout and FEARnet in a dynamic environment.
Diana Kerekes, vice president of Video Content for Comcast, said, “The ability to update VOD advertising will help us offer feature parity with traditional linear and Internet-based advertising systems. We’re pleased to be working with a technology leader like BlackArrow as we look for ways to offer our programming partners expanded opportunities to monetize their content offerings.”
“Comcast has led the industry in creating new opportunities to reach consumers in the on-demand marketplace, and we’re excited to be working with them,” said Dean Denhart, chief executive officer, BlackArrow. “By combining BlackArrow’s expertise in advanced VOD advertising platforms with Comcast’s VOD leadership, we hope to expand the business model significantly for on-demand advertising.”
Tags: ad, Advanced, Advertising, BlackArrow, Comcast, content, insertion, on-demand, System, technology, Video, VoD
Posted by Derrick on October 28, 2009 under Video Streaming and Compression |
ViewCast Corporation announced that WNYC, America’s most listened-to public radio station, has selected ViewCast’s Niagara GoStream SURF portable encoding system for the station’s newly-opened The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space. The Greene Space is a state-of-the-art, multi-media performance space and broadcast studio that presents live broadcasts and tapings of WNYC’s signature programs. In addition, music concerts and festivals, audio theater, literary readings, art exhibits, political debates, symposia, town hall meetings and other exciting civic and cultural events are presented in the space. Most shows from The Greene Space are webcast live and archived in real time in Adobe Flash formats via the Niagara GoStream SURF. Many programs are also made available as video-on-demand (VOD) via the WNYC website.
“With the opening of The Greene Space, thousands of visitors each year are welcomed inside WNYC to experience great radio as it is created,” said Indira Etwaroo, Executive Producer of The Greene Space. “Technology allows millions more to connect to great content by stream, and in many cases download, audio and video of our live events. This is why it was so important to outfit the space with a cutting-edge digital audio and video production system.
“We tried to configure a PC-based encoder, but the machine time and labor for encoding via software, particularly for VOD, was both difficult and expensive,” said Bill Porter, President of Whitehorse Productions, Inc. and consultant to The Greene Space, who managed the ViewCast implementation for WNYC. “ViewCast’s Niagara GoStream SURF was a cost-effective, turnkey solution to provide reliable, real-time, live streaming of video programs and performances, plus VOD turnaround by next morning.“
“WNYC’s The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space is a model of innovation and a testament to the advanced capabilities that ViewCast’s streaming media technology can facilitate for today’s forward-looking content providers,” said David Stoner, President and CEO, ViewCast. “Our plug-and-play, professional-grade Niagara streaming media systems ensure exceptional ease of use, video quality and reliability for sophisticated broadcast applications such as WNYC’s The Greene Space, enabling high-performance video capture and streaming for both live and on-demand content.“
ViewCast’s Niagara streaming media appliances are designed to deliver the quality, features and ease-of-use convenience that professional broadcasters demand. They are pre-configured, plug-and-play solutions that enable users to quickly capture and broadcast premium quality audio and video in multiple formats and at multiple bit rates – all simultaneously. Plus they are powered by ViewCast’s award-winning Osprey technology, guaranteeing exceptional quality and reliability.
Posted by Derrick on September 21, 2009 under Video Streaming and Compression |
Brightcove Inc., the leading online video platform, announced that Fox Latin American Channels has chosen to build its online VOD service on the Brightcove platform. Brightcove is enabling Fox Latin American Channels to deliver more than 800 hours of premium, advertising-supported, long-form video content in Spanish and Portuguese from some of the network’s most popular shows through its Mundo Fox portal (http://mundofox.com/la and http://mundofox.com.br/br). In the short time since launching the new online VOD initiative on June 16th, Fox Latin American Channels has already generated 1.5 million unique users and 2.5 million page views for Mundo Fox.
“We’re proud to expand our online video offering to include premium and long-form content particularly as demand from consumers and advertisers grows throughout Latin America,” said Pablo Silva, vice president of global online publishing of Fox International Channels. “This is not about just publishing videos online,” added Silva. “Our long-term goal is to become one of the most popular and profitable video destinations in our markets, propelled by our flagship TV properties and brands as well as platforms such as Brightcove.”
Brightcove’s long-form delivery capabilities enable Fox Latin American Channels to deliver up to HD-quality full episodes and clips of popular series like 24, Family Guy and Burn Notice from a range of channels and properties, including 20th Century Fox, Fox, FX and National Geographic. Brightcove also provides the best user experience possible by optimizing video delivery for any end user network condition.
“We’re excited to work with Fox Latin American Channels as they continue to expand their long-form on-demand offerings, which include some of the most highly sought after entertainment programming on the Web,” said Jeremy Allaire, Brightcove’s chairman and chief executive officer.
“Fox Latin American Channels continues to be at the forefront of innovation when it comes to online video and on-demand viewing, and we’re proud that the Brightcove online video platform has been chosen to support their ongoing efforts in Latin America and around the world.”
Fox Latin American Channel runs and operates channels, websites, original production and monetization for a variety of network brands in Latin America, including Fox, FX, Fox Life, Fox Sports, Fox News, National Geographic Channel, National Geographic Music, Universal Channel, Hallmark Channel, Utilísima, SPEED Channel, Baby TV Channel, Fox Networks, BienSimple, Fox Toma 1 and Fox Telecolombia. Fox Latin American Channels and Fox International Channels are wholly owned by The News Corporation Limited.
Posted by Derrick on March 19, 2009 under Video Streaming and Compression |
Inlet Technologies, a leader in advanced encoding solutions for new media, announced today full support for Microsoft Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS7) Smooth Streaming technology. Both live events and video on demand content benefit from the quality and scalability advantages of Smooth Streaming, and Inlet Technologies is the first encoding technology provider to announce support of this new platform. Microsoft Corp. and Inlet will demonstrate live Smooth Streaming in action this week at the MIX09 conference put on by Microsoft.
Smooth Streaming is Microsoft’s new HTTP-based adaptive streaming platform, an advanced media delivery method that switches seamlessly between multiple streams, depending on the available bandwidth and PC performance at any given moment. The best possible quality video stream is automatically delivered to the end user without stuttering, dropped frames or buffering. While the Smooth Streaming process itself is completely invisible to the end user, it results in a much improved user experience. It also offers broadcasters the ability to offer true HD (720p+) streams to clients who have sufficient bandwidth without alienating those with lower speed connections.
Inlet is the first encoding solutions provider to announce support for Smooth Streaming for live streaming and video on demand applications. These solutions are ideal for a wide variety of media companies wanting to stream a range of high quality content, including sports, news, and special events. Both Inlet’s Spinnaker family of live streaming appliances and Armada automated VoD management system have built-in support for Smooth Streaming.
“Microsoft is dedicated to improving all aspects of online video, for both consumers and media companies, but we can’t do it alone. We work closely with industry leading partners such as Inlet to help make Smooth Streaming a truly open platform and to make it as easy as possible for media companies to migrate to it,” explained Steve Sklepowich, group product manager for Silverlight at Microsoft.
“We are excited to have yet another ‘first’ under our belt, with this support for Microsoft Smooth Streaming,” said Neal Page, Inlet Technologies CEO. “Inlet is committed to improving all aspects of the online video business by applying advanced technology solutions to real-world applications. Smooth Streaming is a significant leap forward, and presents a compelling opportunity to help media companies improve the quality of online video for all of their customers.”
Inlet also will demonstrate live Smooth Streaming at the NAB show; visit booth number SL5624 for more information
Tags: Armada, encoding solutions, Inlet Technologies, live Smooth Streaming, Microsoft, online video, Silverlight at Microsoft, Smooth Streaming, Spinnaker, video on demand, VoD
