LAS VEGAS -- Solving the problems of lag and buffering in IP video delivery are part of the industry's push to create a better-quality streaming experience overall, and separate announcements here by vendors V-Nova and Net Insight illustrate that trend.
V-Nova said that its Perseus compression solution, which it trialed for several months after announcing it last fall, is now being deployed into set-top boxes for Sky Italy. The company is working with Harmonic, upgrading that delivery vendor's encoding software as well as software in the set-top boxes themselves.
The company said that its compression reduces the HD bitrate of Sky Italia's IP service by half, from 8 Mbps to 4 Mbps.
While the V-Nova Perseus solution is going into a pay-TV operator's equipment first, its value proposition sits squarely in the IP-based video realm. As an agnostic solution, Perseus compression can be used in a number of multiscreen environments, including smartphones, tablets and televisions.
Meantime, Net Insight officially launched Sye, the live-streaming latency solution it dubbed "true live OTT" in its trial phase. First announced this winter, Net Insight tested the syncing solution with its first customer, Tata Communications, and Formula 1 racing.
The Sye solution specifically targets the lag time that exists between the time a live event occurs and when it is actually seen by an end viewer on a TV or other streaming-enabled screen. At the moment, most OTT video takes about 40-45 seconds to travel from glass to glass, at its fastest rate, due to a number of factors including the various steps the video has to pass through in order to be delivered reliably – transcoders, CDNs and other technologies. Sye bypasses some of those steps and syncs IP video so that it arrives on end devices at the same time.
Per Lindgren, SVP of True Live and founder of Net Insight, told FierceOnlineVideo that the syncing solution opens up a number of possibilities in the multiscreen environment. For example, a viewer watching a Formula 1 race on a television screen could also be calling up an in-car view of the race; the synced videos would deliver both viewing angles at the same time, reducing the traditional lag a tablet or smartphone might experience.
Lindgren said that Net Insight was speaking with several potential streaming customers at the NAB Show, but did not announce any new agreements as of yet.
For more:
- see this V-Nova announcement
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Net Insight tackles live-streaming lag with 'True live OTT' solution
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