Tiny US encoder maker Envivio this week launched what it calls the first reconfigurable multichannel and multiplatform IP video encoding architecture for IPTV, Internet TV and mobile TV services.
Virtually every encoder company is trying to come up with a plan for encoding once for broadcaster TV, TV over the web and the different types of handset delivered video, and Harmonic made a big deal a couple of weeks back out of acquiring its way to a solution with a combination of its Rhozet acquisition and its VoD acquisition Entone.
Envivio’s approach is its Trans4M architecture which is reconfigurable to generate 3 screen types of video for TVs, PCs and mobile devices all at once and the encoders can be reconfigured in real time
‘This is an entirely unique architecture that only Envivio encoders can provide,’ came a pretty big claim from Julien Sign’s, President and CEO of Envivio. ‘Service providers want to offer IP video to many different devices while keeping costs and risks down and our Trans4M technology makes this possible. For example, a service provider using the C4 with the Trans4M architecture can have all four ingest channels targeting standard definition IPTV set-top boxes or a mixture of set-top boxes and PCs for Internet TV.’
The company seems to think it is the only one that can approach the ability, although virtually all the major encoder makers have said they are working on a similar approach. Currently, the 4Caster C4 IP video encoder allows service providers to offer both IPTV and Internet TV from the same encoder and the mobile version is apparently on its way.