Haivision Systems was founded in 2004 and in less than a decade has become a leader in media delivery systems, with more than 20,000 systems in use worldwide. The company’s products are used in streaming, recording, management and delivery of high-quality content via video networks and the internet. Its customers span a broad range of industries including medical, education and enterprise installations. Other users include houses of worship, sports and entertainment organizations, government operations and the military.
As a leading provider of video, audio and lighting services, LMG has supported some of the world’s largest conventions and meetings, nationally televised events, international concert tours and Fortune 500 corporate presentations.
Recently we were challenged with delivering live content from one Las Vegas hotel ballroom to several other hotels in the area. Given the high costs of using satellite, we required a high-quality solution for point-to-point broadcasting using the public internet. The solution needed to provide exceptional HD signal quality due to the demanding display requirements at the receiving end of the broadcast.
The ETEX Telephone Cooperative provides traditional telephone connectivity, as well as IPTV, DSL and internet services, to thousands of homes and businesses in Upshur County and surrounding rural areas of northeast Texas.
For more than 25 years, deltatre has proudly worked with some of the top names in the sports industry to provide innovative experiences for their audiences. Today, we’re a leader in providing digital media, production and technology solutions to major sports federations and broadcasters.
As digital video consumption of sports content grows dramatically on all devices—laptops, tablets and smartphones—delivering streaming video is a mission-critical task. For an online audience, source material must be compressed to appropriately sized bit rates for reliable and efficient video streaming on a large scale.
Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale is one of the largest churches in the United States, with a congregation of more than 30,000. We’ve expanded into adjacent cities and now have seven satellite venues. We produce multi-camera church services every week, using both physical media and live streaming.
Roy Sekoff, president and founding editor of HuffPost Live—which streams live content several hours a day via the Pulitzer Prize-winning web site of The Huffington Post—recently announced an unusual arrangement. Half of HuffPost’s 12 hours of daily streaming content began simulcasting on Mark Cuban and Ryan Seacrest’s AXS TV cable channel in mid-May. But AXS is not paying AOL (HuffPost’s parent company) for the programming, and AOL is not paying AXS for the cable TV carriage.
As the industry has grappled to keep abreast of the next new thing when it comes to multiplatform services, OTT technology has morphed into a solution that content creators can no longer afford to ignore—a seamless means of delivering content via broadband that offers a complementary marriage to the broadcast and cable delivery world.
At this year’s NAB Show, it was clear that the industry has begun to embrace over-the-top content in ways that are at turns meaningful, productive and in some cases profitable. But what lies ahead?
OTT vs. TV Everywhere
To be sure, OTT is one answer to a question long asked by the professional video industry: How do we embrace the progressive technology at our fingertips without alienating an existing business model?
The brand new video compression standard HEVC (for High Efficiency Video Coding) was approved in January as an international standard (and designated “H.265” by the International Telecommunication Union). This technology offers an estimated 2x improvement in compression efficiency as compared to H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, allowing a 50 percent reduction in bandwidth usage for an equal-quality stream. As shown in figure 1, this development continues a trend of lower bit rates for each new generation of compression, from MPEG-2 through HEVC. Clearly HEVC offers compelling benefits for video providers and customers, particularly those (such as mobile device users) who have to pay for bandwidth or are challenged by low connection speeds.
In defiance of announcements now standard in theaters that urge viewers to turn off their phones before a movie begins, a Dutch-language film from director Bobby Boermans encourages audiences to tap into a custom-built app that enhances their viewing experience in the aptly titled thriller APP. This two-screen digital production opened in the Netherlands in April and currently is in negotiations for North American distribution and English-language remake rights.
Experiencing the National Film Board of Canada Digital Studio’s transmedia documentary A Journal of Insomniawill make you lose sleep—literally. That’s because the interactive storytelling project is not available on an “on demand” basis. Instead, potential viewers visit insomnia.nfb.ca and make an appointment with either Tina, Fathia, Francis or Sarah, the four real-life insomniacs who were profiled for the production.
