We expect that IBC will be a hotbed of Over The Top video innovation when we visit next week, and tiny French video specialist Anevia has let its OTT cat out of the bag a week early with news of a new streaming system.
Adaptive streaming solutions have been around for the past two years and on their own they don’t make much news, and are falling in value as there are more and more iterations from different technology suppliers. But the Anevia system is all about completing the package ‘ using the Apple http live streaming protocol, as well as most of the other commonly used protocols.
This includes Microsoft Silverlight, Google WebM (built around the VP8 based Codec) and HTML5, although not, as far as we can see Adobe Flash.
Anevia hopes to go after both existing video service suppliers who want to retrofit OTT services, as well as brand new content operators who have no broadband data lines of their own.
Anevia has already lined up Turkey’s Airties to configure its Air 7124 HD 802.11N Wireless IP set-top box to support its multi-protocol video server.
The server can also support IPTV streaming as well as mobile streaming which uses RTP, alongside OTT services, all on the same platform, that way it hopes to offer a really cheap three screen system.
The Anevia system uses a central server, which can ingest both VOD and live streams, which can be connected to clusters of appliances in the cloud, which act as video caching servers. This is how modern VoD servers are usually configured, but we think it is fairly original to integrate mobile and IPTV alongside it.
Anevia is unlikely to unseat any of the majors with a product like this because they need to support their existing IPTV middleware systems, but it could be a useful addition to add fixed OTT and mobile services which could playout on TVs, set tops, PCs, mobile phones, iPhones and of course Tablets.
Anevia thinks this will appeal particularly to operators who wish to extend coverage to users outside the reach of their managed networks, and it points out that Satellite operators fall within this category. This is clearly a trend in Europe now, unlike in the US, where the uncertainty over Network Neutrality is slowing down a lot of this kind of development.
But the bulk of Anevia prospects are likely to be ISPs or content aggregators new to service operation, who want to try their arm.
‘Increased Internet bandwidth has opened up a whole new world of possibilities for video services. Video content can now be streamed and received anywhere on the planet ‘ irrespective of where the content is created or viewed ‘ giving complete freedom to OTT service providers,’ comments Damien Lucas, VP of Strategic Projects and Co-founder of Anevia.
The Airties set top has been designed to allow IPTV and OTT services in parallel, as well as offer video distribution around the home using MIMO and both 2.4 GHz and 5.0 GHz channels on the device. It includes 2GB of NAND flash to offer Pause-Live TV functionality or it can support a progressive download OTT delivery method, though increasingly adaptive streaming is becoming dominant.