October 18, 2007 -- Markham, Ontario: 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.
For more information on Digital Rapids products, please visit www.digital-rapids.com.
About Digital Rapids Corporation - Digital Rapids is a leading developer of professional hardware and software solutions for video ingest, encoding, transcoding, protection, streaming, and delivery. Digital Rapids offers solutions that scale from individual applications to enterprise and global workflows, with the proven expertise to help our customers maximize their productivity and the value of their content in the evolving digital media market. Digital Rapids products integrate seamlessly into new and existing post production, broadcast, institutional and media distribution environments, dramatically increasing the volume and quality of media produced while lowering overall costs. Digital Rapids Corporation (www.digital-rapids.com) is headquartered in Ontario, Canada with sales offices in the United States, the UK and Australia.