Brazil’s Arycom to Resell Streambox ACT-L3 Solutions

Streambox Inc. today announced that it has formed a partnership with Arycom, a major provider of satellite telecommunications services, to resell Streambox ACT-L3 solutions in the Brazilian marketplace. Through the partnership, Arycom will leverage its expertise in turnkey satellite and IP-based solutions to broaden Streambox’s presence in key vertical markets including broadcasting, government, telecommunications, and the military.

Based in São Paulo, Brazil, Arycom is a leading provider of satellite capacity and services through the Inmarsat and Iridium satellite systems. The company’s core competencies in fixed and mobile IP technologies for land, air, and sea-based applications offer clear synergies with Streambox’s IP-centric solutions for newsgathering, video transport, and content aggregation. Based on the industry-leading ACT-L3 codec, Streambox’s software-based solutions enable broadcasters, government agencies, and enterprises to deliver high-quality live and file-based broadcast video from the field using low cost, low-data-rate IP connections.

Streambox and Arycom will be conducting a ‘road show’ in Brazil, scheduled for March 23-27, 2009. The objective for the ‘road show’ is to highlight the joint capabilities of the two companies and to do hands-on presentations of how broadcasters and other key user groups can stream high-quality, low cost SD and HD video over a variety of IP networks.

“Arycom is the ideal partner to help us expand our market presence in Brazil. The company’s deep experience in IP- and satellite-based technologies and solutions offers a natural fit with the Streambox portfolio of products,” said Bob Hildeman, chairman and CEO at Streambox. “In addition, we will be able to leverage Arycom’s established relationships with suppliers and major Brazilian broadcasters, as well as its excellent network and customer base in our traditional vertical markets.”

“The Brazilian broadcasting landscape is becoming intensely competitive as broadcasters race to become early adopters of the latest technologies. As a result, there is strong demand for turnkey ENG and IP-based video solutions,” said Svante Hjorth, CEO of Arycom. “Streambox’s software-based newsgathering and video transport solutions will give us powerful leverage as we seize this market opportunity with broadcasters as well as other key industry groups we already target.”

Columbia Journalism School to Enhance Election-Night Webcast with Streambox

Streambox announced that the Columbia University Journalism School is expanding its presidential election night coverage on November 4 to include a live streaming component in addition to its radio coverage. To help facilitate the live video webcast, a number of Streambox ACT-L3 Software Encoders will be deployed to student journalists on location. The Streambox solution will provide an easy-to-use and reliable means for students to gather live reports to supplement the upcoming election webcast as well as content for New Media and TV Broadcast during the course of the academic year.

The student journalists -- all graduate students - will be involved in producing Columbia's Election Website, designed to provide hands-on experience in all newsgathering and news production disciplines including print, radio/TV broadcast, and new media/web production. Armed with up to four laptops running the Streambox ACT-L3 Software Encoder, students will be able to capture and encode live video from field locations and transport it over low-bandwidth IP connections to the Journalism School's TV control room, where it will be output to a Flash server and streamed to the Election Website. Early testing of the Streambox system using 3G WiFi express cards has yielded transmission speeds as high as 800 Kbps.

"The Streambox solution helps our students gain a broader learning experience by letting them work hands-on with the kinds of systems they'll be using in the real world," said Craig Hettich, manager of broadcast technology for the Columbia University Journalism School. "By providing an affordable and easy-to-use solution for acquiring video from the field and getting it back to the studio for broadcast, Streambox is enhancing our ability to teach cutting edge news reporting. The beauty of the system is that it enables smaller news outlets to do large-scale productions and stream them to the web with the same ease as large news organizations."

In addition to streaming live video to the Election Website, the Columbia Journalism School will use the Streambox solution to incorporate live remote coverage into its spring "Nightly News" broadcasting course. "The ability to include live newsgathering and reporting in this course will give it a whole new dimension," said Hettich.

He added, "For this ambitious project, and the kind of newsgathering our students are doing, Streambox is the only game in town. It's a big plus that the software-based encoder runs on standard-off-the-shelf laptops without the need for any hardware other than a Streambox decoder and possibly video management systems back at the studio. Also, the solution delivers broadcast video from the moment you plug it in."

"The Columbia Journalism School's commitment to give its students authentic real-life experience by using best-of-class teaching tools is one more example of why the school has such a stellar reputation," said Bob Hildeman, chairman and CEO at Streambox. "We're pleased that Columbia has selected Streambox's IP-centric newsgathering platform to play a key role in that effort."