Digital Rapids Advances VOD Encoding for Major U.S. IPTV Provider

Digital
Rapids has worked closely with a premier U.S. telecommunications provider,
along with leading content providers and post production facilities, to bring
to market an advanced H.264 encoding platform meeting the provider’s
demanding requirements for Video on Demand (VOD) content for its flagship
IPTV video service.

Studios
and facilities including Ascent Media Group, Global Digital Media Xchange,
Starz Entertainment, TVN Entertainment and more are using Digital Rapids’
StreamZ encoding solutions with the new Digital Rapids Studio AVC Encoder
module to encode VOD assets for the service, the first entirely Internet
Protocol (IP)-based video service offered by a national

U.S. provider.

“To
ensure that subscribers enjoy a viewing experience meeting their high
standards, the IPTV provider developed a set of specifications for quality, bit
rates and feature richness that encoded content must meet, but which exceeded
the capabilities or workflows of other available encoding solutions,” said
Brick Eksten, President of Digital Rapids Corporation. “We’re excited to
have worked in tandem with the provider and the studios to break new ground in
encoding for VOD and IPTV with the Digital Rapids Studio AVC Encoder.”

“This
new IPTV service is an excellent example of the IP-based future of television,
and we’re thrilled to be working with Digital Rapids and the telecom provider
on this project,” said Andy Shenkler, VP, Operations, Global Digital
Services, Ascent Media Group.

“As
has always been our experience with Digital Rapids solutions, the new Studio
AVC Encoder works very well for encoding premium H.264 content, and has allowed
Starz Entertainment to get a quick start on this expanding IPTV distribution
opportunity,” said Jim Porter, Vice President of Post Production and
Broadcast Operations at Starz Entertainment.

Digital
Rapids StreamZ encoding solutions combine powerful hardware for video and audio
capture and pre-processing with the comprehensive Stream software interface,
delivering high-quality, multi-format media encoding for exacting applications
such as IPTV and VOD. The advanced, hardware-based video processing features
enable optimum quality and the most efficient use of bandwidth in the
compressed result. The Digital Rapids Studio AVC Encoder extends the H.264
encoding capabilities of StreamZ with advanced features optimized for the
stringent requirements of IPTV applications such as Closed Caption embedding,
Transport Stream multiplexing and “trick play” support for set-top
box playback.