For some time Envivio has been chasing the mobile TV broadcast space with its encoding platforms, while the rest of the encoder market dragged its heels looking for opportunities elsewhere ‘ mostly in cable, IPTV, DTH and even in mobile video streaming. As a result of a deal with Nokia, around 70% of all broadcast mobile TV trials, and many services, rely on video encoded with Envivio software.
Companies like Harmonic have targeted web delivered video and believe there is a bigger business case in providing encoding for cellular streaming, where there may be far fewer customers than the network can cope with at any one time, but where more and more channels are offered, and where more processing power and software flexibility is required to deliver to hundreds of different handset profiles.
Now Envivio is joining this space by announcing a new mobile TV configuration for its 4Caster C4 three screens encoder and says that it has already successfully installed them among several mobile network operators but doesn’t disclose which. The 4Caster delivers four channels of video in up to 32 different versions for handsets which can only run certain file formats or their screen or network dictate different video resolutions.
‘As early generation encoding products, particularly software encoders, reach their limits or end of life, service providers are looking for a more substantial, mission-critical grade platform on which to operate their mobile TV services,’ said Julien Sign’s, President and CEO of Envivio.
The 4Caster C4 platform is the Envivio approach to offering three screens of consumer video ‘ to TVs, PCs and mobile devices from a single platform. This strategy has already been adopted with product announcements at both rival encoder specialists and at companies offering sister technology, such as DRM packages or all three environments.