Envivio, Inc. introduced 4Caster C42, the second generation of the company’s Convergence Series video encoding/transcoding platform. 4Caster C42 uses the performance of the latest generation Intel multi-core server processors to deliver better quality video, make more efficient use of bandwidth and enable delivery of high definition (HD) video services to all three consumer screens. The 4Caster C42 joins the 4Caster C4 in the Convergence Series, building on the features of its precursor and giving service providers flexibility to tailor their video headend to match their requirements.“The competitive pressure to deliver more entertainment options, to more subscribers, at the best possible quality, continues to mount,” said Envivio CEO Julien Signès, “yet bandwidth remains precious. 4Caster C42 drives performance and flexibility far beyond platforms based on ASIC hardware. As a result we can offer significant improvements in both video quality and bitrates. By simultaneously supporting multiple networks and many different consumer devices, 4Caster C42 enables an operator to meet the highest consumer expectations–including top quality HD service—on any viewing screen.”
The enhanced performance of 4Caster C42 extends the capabilities of the codec technologies developed by Envivio to further enable delivery of the best quality video within the tight bandwidth tolerances of different networks and applications. The new Envivio Extreme HD compression is exclusive to 4Caster C42 and enables operators to deliver a best-quality HD experience to IPTV subscribers using just 4 Mbps. For Internet TV, even lower bitrates are possible and can be combined with adaptive bitrate technologies such as Silverlight Smooth Streaming HD, Flash HD and Apple adaptive streaming to enable quality delivery over networks with no guaranteed QoS. 4Caster C42 supports all Envivio compressions levels for IPTV, Mobile TV and Internet TV.
Intel engineers have incorporated specific video compression routines submitted by Envivio into the IPP library of the latest generation Intel Xeon processors. The C42 compression engine benefits from these optimizations which provide the performance needed to deliver high quality HD video for the most demanding network scenarios.
In addition to the comprehensive suite of pre-processing tools found in 4Caster C4, the new 4Caster C42 leverages its increased processing power to add support for H.264 over IP input as well as spatial de-noising filters for HD content that corrects visual errors from HD video sources.
