Inlet Technologies, the leader in innovative solutions for digital media preparation, announced today that it will showcase a number of industry-leading technology and product advancements at NAB 2010. The company is unveiling fully-automated ad insertion for live video streaming, support for Second-Generation Adaptive Streaming, as well as extended mobile reach to the Apple® iPad, Blackberry, Android and the latest 3GPP devices.
Inlet will also showcase the new SpinnakerTM IP for live adaptive streaming for all-IP environments, an upgraded Spinnaker Management Console for broadband infrastructure scale and business continuity, and Armada and Fathom support for iPhoneTM and iPad.
Inlet will exhibit at booth SL929. Inlet’s Spinnaker can also be seen in action at AT&T’s booth SU9106, demonstrating live Smooth Streaming and iPad streaming.
Enabling Automated Ad Insertion
At NAB 2010, Inlet is breaking new ground and creating new monetization opportunities for broadcasters when it becomes the first media-preparation technology provider to demonstrate built-in support for fully-automated ad insertion for live streaming. In one example, Inlet’s Spinnaker will leverage SCTE-35 signaling to automate the insertion of video-based ads into live video streams. Spinnaker recognizes a SCTE-35 cue message and translates it into a marker for Flash, Silverlight or iPhone, and optionally inserts a slate at that point. The player then makes a call to an ad server to insert a targeted ad, minimizing latency and manual intervention.
For content providers that do not use SCTE-35, Inlet also supports manual video review and ad insertion. Regional ad insertion, key to networks and their local affiliates, is also enabled with this new technology.
“Automated ad insertion will fuel a significant increase in the availability of streaming content,” explained John Bishop, senior vice president of products and business development, Inlet Technologies. “We are helping broadcasters offer more content through online and mobile channels by creating tangible opportunities for them to monetize that content while delivering the highest-quality live streaming experience possible.”
Inlet will also be showcasing ad insertion solutions for Apple’s iPhone and iPad.
Adaptive 2.0 Streaming
As the first provider to demonstrate full support for adaptive bitrate streaming (ABR) more than one year ago, Inlet continues to extend those capabilities and set new industry standards. Leading the Adaptive 2.0 movement, Inlet is the first to enable IIS Smooth Streaming with H.264, including access to multi-language support, metadata insertion, automated ad insertion capabilities, and low latency.
The company is also poised to support Adobe’s HTTP Dynamic streaming on the Flash platform, expected to launch in May. Flash streaming customers will also have access to ad insertion capabilities, metadata insertion and time code inserts.
In addition, those customers streaming iPhone content can create audio-only streams with JPEG image insertion, AES encryption, multiple playlists and automatic VOD mode.
Extending Mobile Reach
Already recognized as the de facto standard for preparing digital media content for Apple iPhone, Inlet further extends the reach of high quality video to even more mobile consumers with live streaming support for the latest 3GPP and Apple iPad devices.
3GPP and 3GPP2 are the worldwide standards for the creation, delivery and playback of multimedia over 3rd generation, high-speed wireless networks. These standards seek to provide uniform delivery of rich multimedia over newly evolved, broadband mobile networks (3rd generation networks) to the latest multimedia-enabled cell phones.
“As the popularity of mobile video continues to explode, we need to ensure that our customers’ streaming content can be uniformly delivered over the latest multimedia-enabled devices,” said Bishop. “By extending our reach to even more mobile devices, we are the first encoding solution provider to truly give our customers the ability to reach any screen with any type of media.”
Product Enhancements
Inlet also announced upgrades to its Spinnaker family of award-winning streaming appliances for real-time video and audio delivery applications. The new Spinnaker IP is redefining the video experience with full IP input. Content owners can now turn IP source video into multiple internet-ready streams with the bandwidth performance and unique features necessary to provide an HD broadcast experience over any IP network. In addition, Inlet is also introducing a super high-density Spinnaker that sends up to eight live streams from a single 1-RU box. With an additional CPU and faster processors, this new Spinnaker can output streams at a lower cost per stream and with a better adaptive experience for the end user.
In tandem, Inlet has also upgraded its Spinnaker Management Console, a comprehensive management solution for multi-Spinnaker deployments. By automating encoder control and providing failover and backup support, the Console has proven to help maintain business continuity for such large-scale streaming operations as UniversalSports.com and Yahoo!.
Enhanced support for adaptive bitrate streaming makes Inlet’s Armada automated workflow management system and Fathom high-performance advanced encoding platform, the first packaged offerings to support large-volume on-demand streaming of content for iPhone and iPad devices.
About Inlet Technologies
Inlet Technologies is redefining the online video experience with innovative solutions for media preparation that combine striking video quality with surprising simplicity and reliability, enabling content owners to expand their audience and realize greater value from their content. Industry leaders such as Major League Baseball, Microsoft, NBC Universal/Vancouver Winter Games, Yahoo!, France Télévisions and Home Shopping Network rely on Inlet for easy implementation, technical prowess and enterprise scale for their mission critical operations. For more information, please visit www.inlethd.com. Follow us on Twitter at InletTech.
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