Setting the Agenda in Santa Clara: We’re Helping Sponsor the 3rd Annual OTT Con

Over-the-top television (or OTT TV for short) is a technology that’s been heralded as a game-changer for home entertainment media. OTT TV is a television which, by using its own built-in wireless router, can plug into an already extant wireless network to deliver online content to your big-screen home theater. The marriage of television with broadband wireless technology allows for possibilities that make today’s HD cable television systems (systems that were only rolled out in the early 00’s) already seem outdated. By delivering video over the Internet not affiliated with the name-brand carrier, OTT TV has the potential of allowing for an infinite number of broadcast options. Imagine a high-definition satellite television network with the nearly limitless number of channels as YouTube, and you can get a better sense of the scale of entertainment possibilities. 

Over-the-top television is set to outpace the old cable networks; it’s a question not of if, but of when. Nevertheless, OTT TV is a young, upstart industry, with Apple and Google acting as some of the principal powers. There’s an overall need for OTT TV developers to educate the greater broadcast media on the new technology’s works and ways. 

To that end, the third annual Over-the-Top TV Conference will be held in Santa Clara this year. Questions that will be addressed include identifying the major players in the industry, as well as the opportunities and hurdles presented for others in dealing with these major players. Other items on the agenda will be helping determine which OTT TV operators and aggregators are poised to become the first major content providers for the technology, in addition to discussing new means of advertising and addressing one’s customer base.

We at Telairity are proud to be among the sponsors of OTT CON 2012. With our encoding technology already being used in many different OTT TV systems worldwide, we are keen on ushering in this new era of limitless entertainment and variety.

The SES3200: a New Standard for Mobile Broadband

In its 2010 National Broadband Plan, the Federal Communications Commission forecasted an additional 300 MHz would be required within the next four years alone to meet the telecommunication needs of mobile broadband users, and 500 MHz within another few years, and all for good reason. Consider that within the first weekend after its release, Apple’s new iPhone 4S sold over 4 million units in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Canada, Japan, and Australia. Now consider that high-resolution video enabled by H.264 formatting in today’s smartphones can easily surpass 3 million bits per second, an enormous figure by anyone’s estimate. Finally, accept as a given that the worldwide number of users of the mobile Web is set to rise dramatically (currently there are 116 million American mobile Web users alone), and you can begin to appreciate the bit rate levels that will soon – that indeed at this moment are needed – to sustain a mobile Web with the appropriate speed and graphics levels that smart-phone users demand. 

With the prospect of a broadband traffic-jam of epic proportions looming our way, Telairity has begun to address the issue head-on.  Last year at the NationalAssociation of Broadcasters (NAB) convention in Las Vegas, we introduced our new SES3200 Video Encoding System, capable of producing 32 channels of video and 128 channels of audio for the individual user. The SES3200 encoder supports all these functions while still having a low bit rate, in addition to possessing high-res clarity and speed.

The price-tag for the SES3200 is more savvy, too, since companies can now forego having to use multiple encoder devices (and thereby take up more bandwidth) to attain that sheer volume of channels; they can now simply purchase an SES3200 and have done with it. These factors can only prove useful in the coming years, now that China has surpassed the United States in numbers of smartphones sold (24 million units sold in the 3^rd quarter of last year alone, in comparison with America’s 23.3 million units sold during a similar time-frame), and smartphone usage is expected to surge in countries like India, Brazil, South Africa, as well as throughout Southeast Asia. 

As the “online airwaves” grow ever more exponentially congested, the solution cannot simply be to increase bandwidth. The solution also must lie in reducing bandwidth consumption. With its SES3200 low bit rate encoder, Telairity not only anticipates helping reduce congestion in North America and Europe, but expects as well to play a prominent role in helping the companies of developing nations accommodate high-resolution mobile technology into their daily business cycles.

With FanVision on the Rise, It’s a Matter of Time before Telairity Makes It to the Superbowl

Just in case you haven’t already heard the news, Superbowl XLVI is barreling your way this coming weekend. A record-breaking number of American households are expected to tune into this year’s game in Indianapolis, mostly through television, but also an increasing number via interactive platforms such as Internet television. For those who will be attending the game physically, the visual experience will be, as yet, limited (for the most part) to their own pairs of eyes.

That wouldn’t be the case if Indianapolis came equipped with FanVision technology, like an growing number of NFL stadiums do (in addition to the University of Michigan’s Wolverine Stadium, the single largest sports stadium in the U.S.). Using FanVision’s signature 10-channel hand-held controllers, attendees have been able to personalize their experiences of football games like no previous live audiences have been able. By viewing instant replays, by monitoring game stats in real time, by tracking live commentary and more, fans can now interweave, in many stadiums, between the real, live sporting-event and its virtual broadcast without ever leaving their seats.

Telairity has played no small role in helping develop FanVision’s new live-meets-interactive technology. When you consider just how much bandwidth a high-speed, high-definition, hand-held interactive device usually takes up, and then try to picture some 50,000+ pairs of hands each using such a device in a crowded stadium, you wouldn’t be faulted for thinking that the speed and picture quality of FanVision would be something less than great.

But that hasn’t been the case. Telairity’s Series 9000 (SD) H.264/AVC encoders allow excellent speed and video quality for FanVision technology. With each of FanVision’s ten channels employing something along the lines of 750 kilobytes of space, and there being 10 MB of bandwidth space for the stadium overall, large numbers of fans can access simultaneously the same FanVision channels without any bandwidth overcrowding. Few if any companies could design encoders that winnow down a channel to a mere 750 kilobytes, but Telairity has proved itself an ingenuous exception time and again, in this instance as well as others.

What do the fans think of FanVision? The reaction across the board is overwhelmingly (maybe even sometimes explosively) positive. As a fan from St. Louis says about his FanVision console, :I love it, I won’t even go to the bathroom without it.” Or as “tailgatejoe” from Denver puts it, “For any of you wondering whether it is worth the money, the short answer is HELL YES!” Or as another Denver Broncos fan puts it in milder and perhaps more accurate language, “The picture quality and smoothness of the video were tremendous.”

FanVision got its formal start in 2010 at eleven major football venues, but with the unmatched power of Telarity’s optimal encoding technology, and with football growing bigger by the year as a sport and as an enterprise, it’s only getting started. With FanVision’s stunning high-def visual clarity, seamless interactivity and speed that can run circles around Chris Johnson, it’s only a matter of time before FanVision makes it to the Superbowl.

Telairity Provides Key Services to the World’s Fastest-Growing Market

We are delighted to announce that Telairity has struck a sprawling, multifold deal with the world’s fastest-growing economic powerhouse: the People’s Republic of China. The agreement allows for Telairity to supply its SD and HD encoders to several key sectors of China’s economy. Furthermore, Telairity is equally pleased to announce other National Digital TV initiatives in Laos, Thailand, and Sri Lanka, bringing Telairity into the forefront of today’s high-tech economy.

The business pact is essentially triple-fold. Firstly, Telairity will supply its Chinese strategic communications partner, Beijing Blue Satellite Communication Technology Co., Ltd. (BSC), with Telairity BE8500 encoders for an ongoing satellite application project on behalf of China’s Meteorological Administration. We are fully confident that this development heralds only the beginning of a large series of tech-sales breakthroughs for Telairity. BSC not only counts the Chinese Meteorological Administration among its key clients, but also supplies encoding technology for the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health, the China Civil Aviation Administration and the State Administration of Radio, Television, and Film (SARFT). Our pioneering technology will take the lead in helping run day-to-day communications operations throughout China; hardly a small achievement. 

The second part of the agreement can be summarized thusly: we’re proud to announce that we’ve been selected to supply SD and HD encoders for 2.0 broadband media services like interactive cable, IPTV, and mobile television that are in the process of being distributed throughout China. Telairity graciously would like to acknowledge the cooperation and support of trans-Pacific key partners in this agreement, such as Ouranos Technology Co., Ltd. and the China Data Broadcasting Union (CDBU). We are especially excited to cooperating with our esteemed partners in expanding the cutting-edge quality of service in all these “next generation” fields of media.

As if these two developments weren’t noteworthy enough, we are happy to tell the world that we’ve landed an agreement to design, build, and sell encoding systems that meet China’s high AVS encoding standards (for purposes of domestic comparison, these standards are roughly similar to the H.264/AVC video compression standard). This digital TV network, expected to grow quickly up to 500 channels, is being tested in cooperation with SARFT on a province-by-province basis. Currently, we are operating in Sichuan Province, located in southwestern China, and home to an approximate 80 million inhabitants. We are indebted to our partners in this technological venture, Hansun Technology Corporation and the Communications University of China, College of Information Technology (CUC). Together with SARFT and our high-level partners, we expect to revolutionize the technologies available for OPTV, triple-play, and in-home multimedia distribution throughout China as additional provinces subscribe to the network.

We cannot be happier here at Telairity. We cannot be more pleased with the good faith and munificence of our Chinese counterparts, as well as our DTV counterparts in Laos, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. There can be no question that the future belongs – in part – to East Asia, and that Telairity has been granted a monumental opportunity to participate in the development of that future.

Better Technology Top to Bottom: The Telairity Edge

As a leading manufacturer and marketer of video processing solutions for broadcast and professional video applications, Telairity is committed to the development of cutting-edge technology. Our H.264/AVC advanced video compression systems continue to provide the lowest latency and highest compression in the industry, making them ideal choices for a range of remote/field applications. But not all professional broadcast encoder technologies are created equal.

For the most part, companies that develop professional broadcast encoders fall into one of three groups, when considered in light of the technologies employed to develop systems.

•    Some companies adopt a commercial encoder chip (like the Ambarella A2), developed for a related but distinct and much higher volume market (e.g., cameras), and build encoders around that base “System on a Chip” (SoC) hardware platform.
•    Other companies adopt a general purpose CPU (like the latest Intel or AMD quad-core generation of x86 processor), and implement encoders in software on a PC hardware platform—perhaps using some add-in video accelerator board.
•    A third group of companies eschews both of these approaches (special-purpose SoCs or general-purpose CPUs), and develops encoders around some combination of commercially available DSPs (from vendors like TI) and FPGAs (from vendors like Xilinx).

Prominent among Telairity’s several distinctions is the fact that we use none of the technical strategies listed above for product development. Instead, we have leveraged our roots in the semiconductor industry, together with our patented technology for quickly developing complex ASICs with small hardware design teams, to create the 594 MHz Telairity T1P2000 video processor, targeted to video encoding.

Implemented in 90-nm technology, using Telairity’s proprietary design methodology, the T1P2000 video processor achieves high silicon density of over 150,000 gates/mm2. The device’s high level of integration, using a multicore architecture, minimizes the number of chips required for the application and also reduces the latency and bandwidth required for interchip communications, as all five cores share high-speed access to shared DRAM memory to maximize efficiency for video image processing.

In a rapidly changing broadcast industry, Telairity’s T1P2000 is the heart of our H.264 encoding technology, enabling us to develop innovative and efficient solutions to keep ahead of the curve. Tune in again soon for more about our proprietary technology. Until then, you can read more here.