AMSTERDAM--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ZiXi, the leading provider of solutions and services that deliver flawless broadcast-quality HDTV globally via the Internet, today announced ZiXi Cloud Service (ZCS), a cloud-based video broadcasting platform that delivers the highest-quality viewing experience to audiences around the world on any device, including tablets, smartphones, PCs, and laptops. The company will demonstrate the ZCS solution during the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC), being held September 8-13, 2011 in Amsterdam.
Demand for live Internet event streaming has never been greater, but the experience delivered by other webcasting solutions often falls short of user expectations. Video disruptions are all too commonplace, and most providers can’t reliably transmit video in true high-definition (HD) quality. The transmission of video over the first mile remains a daunting challenge for everyone, as upstream bandwidth is determined by the MSO, satellite, or telecommunications provider, and is typically far less than downstream bandwidth. In comparison with other types of network traffic, video is particularly susceptible to network errors and impairments. Furthermore, scaling the video in HD quality to hundreds of thousands of viewers with devices that support different players and content formats is extremely difficult.
ZiXi’s new ZCS Cloud Service solves these problems. With Amazon’s web-based Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) running as a front-end service, ZCS gives businesses their own scalable and affordable cloud-based broadcasting platform. Supporting any standard encoder in the market, ZCS enables live events in full HD quality and delivers the content in multiple video formats, such as HLS and RTMP, to CDNs for wide-scale distribution. This addresses the 1st-mile problem and delivers video to hundreds of thousands of viewers on different mobile devices at the same time. Using ZiXi’s patented Video Transport Platform™ in the cloud, buffering and packet loss disappear, giving users an unparalleled viewing experience in vibrant and reliable HD. ZCS’s built-in high-performance transcoding, a real-time feature that uses fast transrating to deliver the highest resolution display, regardless of playback device type, ensures an optimum viewing experience for a wide range of devices and screen sizes.
“Thomson Reuters (NYSE: TRI) is one of the largest, global providers of webcasting services to the financial industry. We have been using the ZiXi video transport system and have dramatically improved the quality of our live webcasting services while significantly decreasing our overall costs,” said Andreas Heidoetting, global head of webcast technology at Thomson Reuters.
ZiXi’s ZCS solution is cost effective, since payment is usage-based and requires no up-front investment. Further economies are achieved by the solution’s easy-to-use features -- administration and management of the ZCS service are completely web-based, with all elements of the system self-managed by the customer through the use of an Amazon-ZiXi software toolset.
“Video quality is only as good as its weakest link; good long haul transmission quality cannot make up for poor first mile quality,” said Israel Drori, CEO of ZiXi. “The ZiXi Cloud Service is an ideal solution for scaling live webcasts in pristine quality to a large number of viewers through CDNs and to mobile devices. With ZCS, millions of users get outstanding broadcast quality and reliability, every time, whether they’re viewing on a PC, smartphone, or tablet device.”
ZiXi will showcase its ZCS solution at Stand 13.351 in Connected World at IBC.
About ZiXi
Founded in 2006, ZiXi has pioneered a proven, award-winning video transport platform that enables the delivery of flawless, broadcast-quality HD video over the Internet. ZiXi’s patented technology dynamically resolves the problems inherent to the Internet to deliver low-latency video of unprecedented quality with no jitter, packet loss or frame freeze, regardless of network conditions -- transforming the Internet into a broadcast-quality, global HD video delivery network. Broadcasters, enterprises and Over-the-Top video and mobile service providers around the world use ZiXi’s on-premise and cloud-based solutions and services to enrich user experience, create new services and significantly reduce costs. For more information, visit www.zixi.us.