WALTHAM, MA – Jan (7) 2020 —Zixi, the industry leader for enabling dependable, live broadcast-quality video over all-IP, and award winning architect of the Software Defined Video Platform (SDVP), today announced that January 7 through the 9 at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show the company will be featuring with Version 13 extensive new functionalities from the four elements that enable the broadcaster video network to be intelligently and centrally managed using software and integrated devices regardless of the underlying IP network infrastructure including the preeminent Zixi Protocol and 14 supported protocols, the Zixi Video Solutions Stack, Zixi ZEN Master, and the Zixi Enabled Network.
This revolutionary IP technology, adaptable to any future, allows complex networks to be consistently managed from a centralized Control Plane, deployments quickly and easily configured, and high value services rapidly replicated. Essential control functions such as monitoring, fault recovery and security are welded into every aspect of the SDVP, which can be deployed on-premises, through any cloud infrastructure or hybrid IP networks. Openness is a key tenant of the Zixi SDVP, fostering a vendor-neutral ecosystem that can be leveraged by broadcasters, service providers, OEMs and end-users themselves, enabling interoperability with any IP network, any protocol, any cloud provider and any edge device.
At CES Zixi will be exhibiting capabilities from the four elements of the Software-Defined Video Platform:
ZEN Master – ZEN Master’s cloud-based interface provides visual tools to configure, orchestrate, manage and monitor live and live linear broadcast channels at scale and across industry protocols. The sophisticated and customizable UI allows users to view channels, grid-based object and resource monitoring, and at scale channel visualization with debugging and root cause analysis. The powerful and flexible platform facilitates the configuration of notifications and error escalation, free form notes on Zixi Feeders, Receivers, broadcast clusters, sources, channels, and targets, as well as the easy cloning of channels and targets, event filtering by Access Tag, creation of sticky search fields and the configuration of panels to display on the dashboard and preview of individual renditions on adaptive streams.
ZEN Master further offers customizable granular reporting, including usage reports, status summaries, with up-time and outage reporting providing both customers and partners the key data necessary to enhance operations. Advanced automation and scheduling capabilities permit the organization and scheduling of repetitive tasks to streamline content publishing and broadcaster operations with increased operational scale, improved staff efficiencies, and reduced spend on cloud resources. Integrations with AWS, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Azure enable users to connect, monitor and manage Zixi Broadcasters on their AWS, GCP, and Azure instances within ZEN Master, providing optimized operations.
Video Solutions Stack – The Zixi Video Solutions Stack provides foundational software tools and core media processing functions that enable broadcasters to reliably and securely transport live video over any IP network, any protocol and any cloud provider correcting for packet loss and jitter. Zixi’s software algorithms optimize the streams between the Zixi Feeders, Zixi Broadcaster and Zixi Receivers and work in concert to deliver live video over IP and Hybrid IP networks. Users can leverage Zixi’s patent-pending Hitless Failover techniques for 99.999%+ reliable transport between sources and receivers. Zixi’s Hybrid Network Sequenced Hitless Failover uses Zixi’s patent pending extension and improvement of SMPTE 2022-7 with industry leading package sequence alignment algorithm to create one coherent stream out of multiple stream fragments from multiple IP networks, internet, fiber, satellite, or cellular connections. Zixi’s Hybrid Network Bonded Hitless failover provides the capability to blend internet, fiber, satellite, and cellular connections from multiple providers to form a virtual bonded network that dynamically and intelligently manages the fluctuating bandwidth, packet loss, and latency differences of individual connections in real-time to choose the optimal path to route IP packets to their destination.
The Video Solutions Stack also provides broadcasters with enhanced tools to streamline workflows including live 4K transcoding and repackaging, Machine Learning based ePSNR to estimate encoded video quality, recording, time shifted delivery, and auto-slating. The Video Solutions Stack also offers network, transport, content and encoder quality analytics across IP networks and cloud infrastructures, further enabling broadcasters with analytical data they need to monitor business impact and optimize their operations.
Zixi Protocols – Zixi continues to advance the market-leading Zixi protocol while adding additional value to tangential offerings from other vendors, standards and open sourced initiatives as part of the open Software-Defined Video Platform. Machine Learning algorithms power Zixi’s next-generation transport streaming protocol, reliably assessing networking conditions in real-time to make appropriate predictions and trade-offs between bitrate, Forward Error Correction (FEC) overhead, and latency. These algorithms use numerous data points such as round-trip time, jitter, channel loss rate, burstiness, and more to determine the most effective data to FEC overhead ratio, while maintaining the lowest latency available. A reinforced learning approach improves the quality of the video while the stream is being transmitted; the longer the stream is going, the more accurate the network assessments are, and in turn a higher ratio of the data (higher video and audio bitrate) will be transmitted, resulting in the highest overall video quality. Video transport with the Zixi protocol is conducted using a multi-layered security approach such as end-to-end encryption using industry-standard AES and DTLS ciphers in order to provide the best-in-class content protection in the market.
In addition to the 10 protocols currently supported by the Zixi Platform, only available with Zixi ZEN Master Zixi is releasing later this year implementations of Multipath TCP, TCP BBR, SRT and the RIST Main Profile. By offering all the relevant protocols, Zixi is future proofing clients against any changing technology shifts. Additional features include MPTS to SPTS demultiplexing in Broadcaster inputs, sending elementary frames over multiplexed streams in the Zixi Feeder interface and support for re-multiplexing of streams with multiple PIDs on Zixi Receiver and Zixi Broadcaster outputs.
Zixi Enabled Network – Openness and interoperability are at the core of the Zixi Enabled Network ecosystem of over 150 OEM, technology partners and media service providers and 500-plus customers are transmitting live video between 80,000 endpoints in more than 100 countries. 50 new technology vendors adopted Zixi and became Zixi ZEN Master certified in 2019 in order to deliver world-class live and live linear contribution or distribution solutions reliably and securely to customers at scale around the world.
AppearTV, ATEME, Blonder Tongue, Edgeware, Elecard, Kiloview, Kontron, RedBee Media, Sencore, Socionext, Telstra, Telestream, Video Flow, Videon Central, and Vimond, were among some of the notable companies that partnered with Zixi in 2019 to provide integrated video streaming offerings to the broadcaster community. The company continues to invest in the ecosystem with dedicated resources to assist partners with development, testing, and proactive go-to-market activities to provide extensive visibility to prospective consumers.
“With over 450% growth from Zixi’s largest accounts and the industry’s biggest and most strategic companies, Zixi had a record 2019 as we continued to experience dramatic expansion and market adoption with traditional broadcasters, OTT Services, and content providers” said Gordon Brooks, Executive Chairman and CEO, Zixi. “Zixi continues to innovate and deliver global, scalable solutions never conceivable until just recently. Zixi is truly unique, allowing our customers to seamlessly use any type of IP Network, any protocol, any cloud provider and any edge device for the ultimate interoperability.”
