Envivio, a provider of IP (Internet protocol) video convergence encoding solutions from mobile to HD ( high definition), announced that its 4Caster C4 encoder is now interoperable with Microsoft Mediaroom, a software platform that facilitates much multimedia content via television. With this, the C4 compression platform expands the range of solutions that are available to operators who intend to or already deploying IPTV services using Microsoft (News - Alert) Mediaroom.
Envivio also announced that the 4Caster C4 encoder has been qualified by Qualification Lab (IQ Lab) for SD (standard definition) video encoding.
Envivio (News - Alert) claims that it is the only company to offer convergence solutions that support the "Three Screens" of consumer video that include TVs, PCs and mobile phones, thereby making IP video a reality - over any type of network and to any multimedia device from mobile to HD.
The 4Caster C4 is a Three Screens multi-channel, multi-profile video encoder, which is designed as an integrated solution for IPTV (News - Alert), Internet TV and mobile TV applications. It is a multi-service compression engine that receives, decodes, re-encodes, and transmits programming all in IP. It can support one channel of HD or multiple channels of standard definition encoding. It supports digital, analog and MPEG-2 Transport Stream over IP inputs. It also supports wide-range of video and audio encoding options, in order to support efficient delivery of content to the Three Screens.
According to Envivio, the C4 encoder can deliver either premium compression or extreme compression encoding configurations for IPTV applications, using company’s new encoding core. It can also deliver video content for playback in Windows Media Player, QuickTime and VLC - for Internet TV applications and it also has the capability to deliver 3GPP, 3GPP2 compliant streams for playback on a wide variety of mobile devices – for mobile TV applications.
The Envivio C4 also offers optional support for Picture in Picture, Internet TV encoding up to VGA (video graphics array) resolution and multi-profile encoding for mobile TV streaming.
The Envivio C4 encoder eliminates the need for legacy video interfaces between decoders and encoders, thereby reducing both cost and system complexity. The company’s hardware platform along with embedded software encoding core, makes the encoder to offer enhanced service flexibility and as well as encoding performance upgradeability, which are not possible with legacy hardware-only compression platforms, says company.
The IQ Lab performed thorough testing, in order to ensure C4’s long-term interoperability and compliance of encoders and other critical components, which intended to support deployments of the Microsoft Mediaroom IPTV platform.
"Our Interoperability and Qualification Lab was designed to give the world's leading IPTV service providers the best choice of carrier-grade encoding platforms that are fully compatible with Microsoft Mediaroom," said Dan McCrary, director of the global partner ecosystem for Microsoft Mediaroom. "The commitment of key vendors like Envivio to this important quality assurance process is fundamental to the proven excellence of Mediaroom-powered services and their continued success with consumers."
The 4Caster C4 also supports the Chinese AVS (News - Alert) (advanced visual system) video compression standard.
Envivio says that its solutions deliver AVC (H.264), AVS, and Windows Media Video (VC-1) compressed video quality at the lowest bit rate for mobile TV, Internet TV, IPTV, and broadcast applications.
Jayashree Adkoli is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Jayashree's articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Tim Gray