VideoFlow DVP Technology Succefully Uses Ka Band Satellite for Uninterrupted Live Sports Content

VideoFlows Digital Video Protection (DVP) technology has been used to provide more than two hours of live, high quality broadcast over Ka band satellite links. The recent pilot took place in very demanding conditions including two satellite hops -- one from Siena to Torino where the Ka Sat Hub is located and from Torino to Bologna -- and an unexpected severe thunderstorm above the sports event that caused the Ka band channel to degrade considerably. A staggering 300,000 packets were recovered by VideoFlows DVP during the two and a half hour of broadcasting, more than 30 packets a second on average.

Adi Rozenberg, VideoFlows CTO, explained, The Ka band satellite technology provides low cost, broadband connectivity over large areas but is not robust for live video delivery as it very susceptible to adverse weather conditions such as rain or storms. The resulting packet loss ratios are similar to those for standard internet connections that our DVP technology is designed to compensate. The delay fluctuations or jitter were very high, to the extent that no video could be seen without using our DVP. We were confident that it would excel in this application. We even turned off the DVP for a few moments during the pilot and the picture quality instantly degraded and became unwatchable. Upon turning it back on, the video quality immediately became high quality despite the fact that the networks problems remained.

The trial broadcast was arranged by VideoFlows Italian distributor, Diem Technologies, who also used Ericssons AVP2000 with CE-X encoder card and RX8200 decoders which easily integrate with the VideoFlows technology. In this pilot, 4Mbps and 6Mbps MPEG4 encoding bit rates were tested over the Ka Sat.

Mrs. Ronit Kalujny, VideoFlows CEO, added, We have already proven that we can open up the Internet for the commercial broadcast of high quality, live content. Our ability to ensure that no packets are lost now opens up the Ka band satellite option for use in rural and suburban areas as well as DSNG and occasional use where landline or mobile connection is either not available or congested. Now, with both standard internet and Ka band satellite, we offer a comprehensive alternative to expensive legacy solutions by using low cost, consumer-grade, Internet connections.

Cesare Camparada, Diems Head of Technology, concluded, All were very impressed at how rock solid the transmission was. Even at the height of the thunderstorm, right above the event, there were no glitches in the live broadcast despite the Ka sat channel being degraded. Without the DVP, the packet losses and jitter would have been too much for the video decoders to manage. We arranged the demonstration for several customers who are now in discussion with us to deploy VideoFlows technology to save them money and open up new markets covering a wide range of live events from news to sports.

VideoFlow technology

Live video broadcast are sent as a continuous bit stream, which the Internet was never designed to handle, resulting in artefacts caused by jitter, and packet loss. More than a couple of seconds of latency is unacceptable by customers expecting to enjoy the excitement of live events like sport as they happen. VideoFlows patent pending technology opens the Internet for delivering content by ensuring that no packet is lost and nullifying the jitter caused by transiting the Internet. By doing so, it affords broadcasters, teleports and operators the opportunity to use a highly advanced, low cost solution for live, high quality video streams in place of existing, expensive solutions.

The DVP comes as a Plug and Play pair - a Protector, which stores the packets until it is certain that they have been correctly received, and a Sentinel which monitors the health of the video stream by watching for packet loss and requests packets to be resent from the Protectors cache only if required. This is ensured by VideoFlows patents, which cover techniques to minimize the number of packets that have to be resent. VideoFlows solution is highly flexible working with internet connections as slow as 200Kb/s or as fast as 800Mbps yet delivering the desired high quality. VideoFlows patents also covers techniques to reduce bandwidth overhead to the minimum possible and to keep any delays at less than the two seconds, which is the maximum tolerated for true live broadcasts. VideoFlows DVP family of products enables the reduction of bandwidth requirements cutting operational costs compared to the current solutions.

Video demo at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9ZjpjIlonU&feature=player_embedded

VideoFlow http://www.video-flow.com

VideoFlow is the pioneer of live high quality video (SD, HD and above) over standard internet connections. Its DVP (Digital Video Protection) solutions rapidly pay for themselves by making expensive leased lines redundant for live broadcast. The high quality of the original high quality video input is maintained during its transfer over the internet without jitter or latency greater than two seconds. VideoFlow has four key technology patents covering Live Content Delivery Networking (LCDN) with over a dozen patents pending.

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