Live From CES: Zixi Bolsters Its Software-Defined Video Platform While Expanding Portfolio of Supported Protocols

Live From CES: Zixi Bolsters Its Software-Defined Video Platform While Expanding Portfolio of Supported Protocols CEO Gordon Brooks believes industry is yet to see what IP is truly capable of By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital

Thursday, January 9, 2020 - 7:31 pm

Print This Story

Story Highlights

While Zixi, a developer of technology to support the delivery of live, broadcast-quality video, over IP, is showing off a slew of new functionalities in Version 13 of its Software Defined Video Platform here at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show, its major goal is continuing to trumpet the industry-redefining potential of video delivery over IP and just how far its come (not to mention how much potential still remains).

In a conversation with SVG, Gordon Brooks, Executive Chairman and CEO of Zixi shared that the crux of the focus of Zixi's efforts here at this CES is to paint for the technology industry the four elements of what the company is all about: ZEN Master, its video solutions Stack, Zixi protocols (as well as 14 other supported protocols), and the Zixi-enabled network

A lot of people haven't seen what IP can really do, Gordon Brooks, Executive Chairman and CEO of Zixi said to SVG. They think of it as a circle and not a sphere. It's the same with Zixi. They know Zixi as a protocol. So for the sports world and all of the live world, its knowing us as a protocol but through the Zixi Video Solutions Stack, the company is able to provide software tools and core media processing functions that help content owners transport live video over any IP network, any protocol and any cloud provider, while also correcting for packet loss and jitter.

The video solutions stack is about doing hitless failover across multiple IP types, like fiber and cellular or fiber and Internet, he says. That's all proprietary and all of the reliability, the multi-cloud, the auto-slating, the protocol switching, we do that across all protocols, not just the Zixi protocol.

Gordon Brooks, Executive Chairman and CEO, Zixi

The company views this all as a future-proofing measure for its software-based solutions and the interoperability keeps Zixi positioned as a critical and flexible foundation to a full video delivery workflow. Zixi noted that in addition to the 10 protocols currently supported by the Zixi Platform, they are releasing later this year implementations of Multipath TCP, TCP BBR, SRT, and the RIST Main Profile.

Zen Master has been the facet of Zixi that has been getting the most attention in industry trade show environments and the cloud-based interface is proving to be a valuable tool for content delivery entities looking to have significantly more transparency and control over the delivery and real-time performance of their live content. According to the company's official CES release, Zen Master offers visual tools to configure, orchestrate, manage and monitor live and live linear broadcast channels at scale and across industry protocols.

Integrations with AWS, Google Cloud Platform and Azure are added bonuses for operations within ZEN Master.

The Zixi Enabled Network, meanwhile, also benefits from the company's openness and interoperability with over 150 OEM, technology partners and media service providers and 500-plus customers transmitting live video between 80,000 endpoints in more than 100 countries (according to the company release). The company added 50 new technology vendors who adopted Zixi and became Zixi ZEN Master certified in 2019.

Brooks also highlighted a handful of sports-centric products that Zixi has supported recently, including assisting Amazon in the delivery of streaming-exclusive Premier League matches in the UK, 4K deliver of the FIFA Women's World Cup, and support behind a fully-remote eight-camera center court coverage of a tournament on Tennis Channel that utilized a crew of just two technicians, and a server with delivery from the venue over a single Internet connection.

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2020/01/09/live-from-ces-zixi-bolsters-its...
	See more stories from svg

Most recent headlines