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UniversalSports.com Taps Inlet Technologies for Both Live Streaming and Video-On-Demand

Inlet Technologies, the leader in innovative solutions for digital media preparation, announced that Universal Sports has selected its Spinnaker and Armad solutions to power UniversalSports.com’s live and on-demand coverage of world-class sports.

Universal Sports serves as the preeminent multiplatform destination for Olympic and lifestyle sports programming, offering more than 1,000 live events and 7,000 hours of annual original event programming. UniversalSports.com delivers more than 100,000 hours of programming content with dedicated, sport-specific "channels," including Skiing, Rowing, Swimming, and Cycling, to give fans a centralized, convenient, consistent place to go for event video, video highlights, breaking news, and features. Universal Sports is following a growing trend in the sports industry by complementing traditional broadcasts with unprecedented online access.

"We're dedicated to delivering our fans and viewers at UniversalSports.com the highest quality video presentation of our world-class sporting events," said Carlos Silva, president and COO of Universal Sports. "Increasingly, fans are turning to the web to view their favorite sports, competitions and events. Our partners at Inlet Technologies allow us to deliver the online sports-viewing experience that brings our viewers back for more."

“Inlet’s Spinnaker and Armada solutions, along with Microsoft Smooth Streaming, will offer UniversalSports.com viewers the highest quality video and more personalized viewing options,” said John Bishop, senior vice president of strategy and business development, Inlet Technologies. “Following the recent Vancouver Winter Games announcement, we are excited and proud of this collaboration with UniversalSports.com, which further solidifies Inlet’s role as a strategic partner of NBC Sports, and as a leader in online sports video.”

Inlet’s Spinnaker family of encoding solutions is especially well-suited for live sports as it provides broadcast-quality streams over the Internet to multiple devices and screens. With its built-in support for adaptive streaming protocols, including iPhone streaming and Microsoft Smooth Streaming, Spinnaker delivers exceptional quality that enhances online viewing of live sports action. Spinnaker’s patent pending stream synchronization capability makes it ideal for adaptive bitrate delivery.

Inlet is also redefining the process of building and scaling a video-on-demand operation. Automation and software intelligence are the keys to building scale and quality while minimizing costs. Inlet's Armada is a revolutionary workflow management system that automates the entire file preparation process and adds encoding intelligence, not just simple node management.

Internap Enhances Content Delivery Network for High-Quality Video

Internap Network Services Corporation, a global provider of end-to-end Internet business solutions, announced enhancements to its Content Delivery Network (CDN) offering, including new ease-of-use functions and automation of key CDN capabilities. Exclusively delivered with Internap’s Performance IP™ service – which ensures optimal video delivery across the Internet – these enhancements deliver an intelligent video streaming solution that simplifies and automates content creation, management and reporting with the highest quality end user experience.

According to comScore’s Video Metrix service, during the month of September 2009, more than 84.8% of the total U.S. Internet audience watched online video, and the average online viewer watched 9.8 hours of video. As more organizations look to adopt video CDNs as part of their marketing strategy and business operations, they also face cost and complexity challenges associated with delivering high-quality content across an increasingly diverse device landscape of PCs, netbooks and mobile phones. Additionally, as video usage broadens beyond the user-generated content and over-the-top media and entertainment markets and becomes a core enterprise tool for communicating with business-critical audiences – such as employees, customers, investors and partners – ensuring the highest quality experience to those consumers by overcoming issues of network latency, congestion and downtime are also becoming key CDN requirements.

Internap’s CDN addresses these challenges with a fully-integrated solution for live and on-demand video streaming – with the Adobe® Flash® Platform, Microsoft® Silverlight™ and iPhone formats – that allows organizations to focus exclusively on content creation by simplifying and streamlining the workflow for content uploading, transcoding, management and reporting. By leveraging Internap’s patented MIRO™ (Managed Internet Route Optimizer) technology – which dynamically selects the best path for video traffic across multiple Internet backbones based on network performance characteristics instead of the least number of Internet hops – organizations are assured of a highly-reliable CDN with guaranteed uptime and performance-based service level agreements.

“Our collaboration with Internap provides customers with a one-stop shop for seamless delivery of high-quality online video,” said Bill Rusitzky, senior director for media alliances at Adobe. “Internap’s CDN utilizing the Adobe Flash Platform is optimized for delivery to a broad range of operating systems and devices while providing the network performance and high-quality experience customers expect from Internet video today.”

Through its partnerships and enhancements to its CDN solution, Internap provides customers with the ability to maximize the consuming audience by addressing the broadest range of devices across the Internet. According to comScore Media Metrix, approximately 75 percent of online videos viewed worldwide are delivered using Adobe Flash technology, making it the No. 1 technology for video on the Web. Adobe Flash Player — already installed on 98 percent of Internet-connected desktops — gives viewers access to rich content without having to download additional software.

The new ease-of-use features within Internap’s CDN MediaConsole® 5.0 CDN include:
Integrated, rule-based transcoding – automatically converts video into the ideal formats for a broad range of devices, allowing content to reach the widest audience possible without additional management and development costs.

Integrated adaptive bitrate – continuous bitrate adjustment dynamically adapts video streams based on the capabilities and bandwidth of the network, ultimately ensuring that the best quality video is delivered to an individual device.

Advanced analytics and reporting – enables video campaign refinement through: comprehensive statistics for individual video streams delivered; audience geographical information; and audience viewing habits by file, directory or custom segmentation, among other capabilities.

“Microsoft is committed to helping partners deliver the highest quality online video with Silverlight,” said Steve Sklepowich, director for Silverlight at Microsoft Corp. “Internap’s enhancements to their CDN provide their customers with a simplified content creation and delivery solution, allowing them to more efficiently deliver high quality video with interactivity using Silverlight across the Web.”

“Video is the single most immersive, engaging and effective form of electronic communication, but the cost and complexity associated with high-quality delivery has held it back from being even more widely used on the Web,” said Peter Evans, senior vice president of marketing at Internap. “Internap’s CDN enhancements address this issue by automating the entire process from video creation to management to delivery, and then delivering superior performance with the industry’s only route-optimized CDN for video quality that you can see. This finally frees enterprises to focus on delivering valuable content to drive their business and not worry about the technology behind managing and distributing it. ”

Internap is showcasing its CDN offering, along with its Performance IP service, at Streaming Media West, November 17-19, in San Jose, Calif. in booth 601.

Envivio 4Caster C4 Encoder Powers Bouygues Telecom Mobile TV Service

Envivio Inc. announced that its 4Caster C4 video encoder is being used by Bouygues Telecom, one of France's largest mobile network operators with ten million subscribers, to encode video for its TV 3G+ mobile video service. The Bouygues Telecom video headend is hosted by Cognacq-Jay Image, the content management and delivery subsidiary of TDF. TV 3G+ provides subscribers with access to more than 60 channels in a variety of standard and premium packages.

When launching the new service in November 2008, Bouygues Telecom and Cognacq-Jay Image elected to replace their legacy software encoders with the 4Caster C4 hardware encoder configured for Mobile TV. The multi-profile 4Caster C4 enables the TV 3G+ service to be optimized for the 176 different handsets currently in use by Bouygues Telecom subscribers. This includes a QVGA resolution, 3.5G HSDPA profile to deliver premium video quality for subscribers with high end devices.

“4Caster C4 from Envivio has helped us by delivering the reliability and performance needed to provide a good quality of experience for the end user, as well as flexibility that is enabling our company to follow the fast-moving mobile market.” said Thibaut Keraval in charge of Mobile Services Solutions in Bouygues Telecom

“Upgrading the existing infrastructure to an up-to-date Envivio platform was an important decision in the development of TV 3G+,” said David Karoutchi, Business Development Manager – Mobile & Broadband, Cognacq-Jay Image. “The 4Caster C4 provides a high reliability, high performance foundation that offers the superior service levels we were looking for in order to ensure the best experience for subscribers.”

The award-winning Envivio 4Caster C4 simultaneously delivers four channels of video with up to 32 different Mobile TV profiles per system, providing an advanced compression platform for operators launching new services or upgrading early generation services based on software encoding platforms. The Bouygues Telecom deployment also includes the Envivio 4Manager headend management system, providing M:N automatic redundancy configuration for true carrier-grade service availability. This transforms mobile TV into a full-fledged service offering, based on a state-of-the-art professional headend infrastructure.

Brightcove 4 Online Video Platform Unveiled

Brightcove Inc. announced the general availability of Brightcove 4, a major new release of the industry-leading online video platform with enhancements that empower customers to maximize the quality, reach and business impact of online video across desktops and devices. Brightcove 4 introduces a host of new features, including support for native iPhone™ video application development, expanded live streaming capabilities, advanced analytics, and new resources for video distribution, monetization and custom online video applications.

Brightcove also introduced the new Brightcove Express edition to bring the power and flexibility of the leading online video platform within reach for all website projects, no matter how large or small. Brightcove Express is priced starting at 99 dollars per month with no annual contract.

“As video becomes pervasive on the Web, publishers face increasingly complex and demanding requirements that often span multiple use-cases and devices,” said Jeremy Allaire, Brightcove chairman and chief executive officer. “Brightcove 4 provides a powerful and extensible suite of new services that make it easy for customers to execute three-screen strategies and generate additional value from online video through new distribution and monetization opportunities. And with Brightcove Express, the Brightcove 4 platform is accessible for any size organization and projects of any scope.”

Brightcove 4 builds on the success of the most comprehensive and widely-used online video platform in the market with wide-ranging innovations and enhancements.

Deliver high-quality video experiences across desktops and devices - Brightcove 4 introduces new capabilities that make it easier than ever to execute high-quality, three-screen strategies:
• Custom cloud encoding offers fine-grained control over state-of-the-art encoding technology, with higher quality default encoding, more formats, and more renditions to ensure optimal quality on every connection and device.

• Secure multi-bitrate streaming protects content while delivering smooth adaptive streaming over any connection.

• Universal Delivery Service (UDS) enables the delivery of content over the most appropriate protocol for the viewer, whether it is via PC, mobile device, connected television or set-top box.

• Brightcove Player and Software Development Kit (SDK) for the iPhone expands the delivery options available to website publishers to include iPhone applications and mobile video websites.

Maximize the business value of online video - Brightcove 4 addresses new use-cases and advanced requirements with a host of new features to help businesses and organizations generate additional value from their online video initiatives:
• Advanced monetization capabilities offer more control and efficiency in ad operations, access to new advertising networks and servers from Google, Yahoo, FreeWheel and the OpenX ad technology platform, as well as support for Video Ad Serving Template (VAST), the new industry standard enabling publishers to work with multiple ad servers and networks.

• Enhanced analytics provide in-depth insight into viewer engagement and the overall value of an organization's video content by highlighting the most effective and ineffective initiatives.

• Social sharing accelerates the flow of video through social networks and services, including Facebook®, MySpace and Twitter.

• Support for live streaming, including the ability to mix and match live and video on-demand programming within the same Brightcove players, brings the compelling immediacy of ad-supported live content within reach for publishers and projects of all sizes and scope.

• Media sharing helps publishers share videos across divisions, affiliates, and with other partners with a single click, enabling them to generate more value from their content through re-use and re-distribution.

Harness the power of cloud-based services to extend online video - Brightcove 4 includes a wide array of new cloud services, SDKs, and extensibility options that provide publishers with an advanced starting point that can adapt and scale to the requirements of the most sophisticated video project:
• Enhanced Media Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) allow developers to build deep, real-time integrations within their Web applications to drive search engine optimization and support robust workflow adaptations that lower the cost of video publishing.

• New Player APIs support the development of highly customized user experiences, advanced monetization, analytics tracking, and synchronized content placement.

• Brightcove Experience Markup Language (BEML) component skinning makes it easier to create fully branded player controls and in-player design elements without requiring Flash programming.

• iPhone SDK for Objective C programmers introduces pre-built components for playback, social sharing, content discovery, and hooks into the Brightcove Media API services.

• Ad Rules API and SDK offers more control and efficiency in ad operations to enable the easy development of sophisticated ad policies, new business logic and custom ad player integrations.

Available for any online video project, no matter how large or small - Brightcove 4's new capabilities and pricing brings the leading online video platform within reach for every professional website project or organization:
• Brightcove Express is a new edition that packs in all the essentials required to jumpstart new online video projects for as little as 99 dollars per month and with no annual contract.

• Easy integration with advertising networks makes it possible to deliver ad-supported video content at low cost.

• Google Analytics integration provides organizations with easy access to the most popular free Web analytics package, making it possible to get a unified view of all content interactions at an extremely low cost.

• Content Management System (CMS) integrations with popular entry-level and open source CMS solutions such as WordPress, TypePad, Drupal, Joomla and Ektron, enable websites of all sizes to easily integrate professional video into their existing Web publishing workflow.