NAB Perspectives: Inlet’s Matt Smith on Adaptive Bit Rate

The ink is just drying on Cisco’s acquisition of Inlet Technologies, but the new partnership arrives at the NAB Show full stream ahead. Unveiled in January at CES, Videoscape is a software-based platform designed to unify video assets across different devices.

“More and more service providers who use Cisco are looking to deploy TV Everywhere and multiscreen experiences with Videoscape,” says Inlet VP/Chief Systems Architect Matt Smith. “These operators must put the architecture and workflow in place to deliver that content to those screens. That is right in our wheelhouse; it’s what we specialize in.”

Inlet’s Adaptive Bit Rate (ABR) technology provides tools for delivering media over managed and unmanaged IP networks by adapting video streams based on real-time network conditions.

“Adaptive bitrate is something that Inlet has embraced very aggressively over the past two years,” says Smith. “We were the first in the this market to ship [Microsoft’s] Smooth Streaming, first to ship HLS [Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming], and we have very deep ties with Adobe streaming technology as well.”

The Inlet live-streaming appliance helps enable new revenue streams in Videoscape by allowing content providers and service providers to insert advertising into live streams. Inlet encoding platforms wrap a single interactive transport stream into multiple delivery formats and allow providers to deliver to all of those formats simultaneously.

“Verizon or Comcast or TW and other service providers deliver to the home in a network that they manage; they know everything about that network all the time,” says Smith. “When delivering to any screen at any time, though, they have to go outside that comfort zone. That is right in Inlet’s backyard. That is where we fit into the Videoscape scheme. We can help those service providers to reach those other screens over largely unmanaged networks.”