Streaming Media - 2008 Industry Sourcebook - (Page 185) SyncCast rises to the high-def challenge With the help of Inlet's quality-control software, the company encoded 500 hours of HD in three weeks. by Max Bloom n ot too many years ago, only streaming media fanatics had the patience to sit through buffer-challenged 120x160 videos on the web. Today, with more than 54 million broadband connections and more than 52 million HDTV sets in U.S. homes—and a new generation of set-top boxes (STBs) entering the mainstream— expectations have changed. Stuttering, blocky video just won’t cut it anymore. Last year, when Microsoft prepared to launch Xbox LIVE Video Marketplace to deliver high-quality SD and HD content to Xbox 360 owners, the company turned to a trusted partner, SyncCast, to build a secure, centralized video hosting delivery platform. (In July 2007, SyncCast was acquired by Thomson, but since this project was completed before the acquisition, we'll keep referring to the company as SyncCast.) The Anaheim, Calif.-based SyncCast is a leading provider of digital media technology; it has extensive experience in application development, system integration, hosting, connectivity, and content distribution services. The company has placed particular emphasis on the development and integration of complex digital rights management (DRM) solutions for the entertainment and broadcast industries. Since the company’s founding in 1999, SyncCast has often partnered with Microsoft to develop digital media distribution solutions incorporating Microsoft’s DRM technologies. So it made sense for Microsoft to turn to its longtime partner for the launch of Xbox LIVE. For SyncCast, encoding 500 hours of high-quality content in the 3 short weeks before a Nov. 22, 2006, hard launch date—and an additional 500 hours in time for the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2007—was the toughest challenge the company had yet faced. SyncCast had more than 50 Dell PowerEdge 2950 dual-core, dual-processor servers at its Anaheim encoding farm, and it was prepared to handle the volume. The key issues were time and quality control (QC). Lance Ware, founder and CEO of SyncCast before its acquisition, and now chief technology officer for Technicolor’s WWW.STREAMINGMEDIA.COM 185 case studies http://WWW.STREAMINGMEDIA.COM
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