In Broadcast - March 2015 - 50

50

www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 5 - Issue 3 | March 2015

InMedia

NeuLion & DivX Deliver On
Next-Gen Video Technology
NeuLion & DivX have launched Ultra HD/ 4K
technology and services aimed at the next
generation of live streaming...

L

eading provider of live and ondemand premium sports and
entertainment services and nextgeneration digital video solutions,
NeuLion, and the recently acquired
technology provider, DivX, deliver
seamless video experiences to
consumers on multiple devices and
platforms.
The combined company is creating
an online video powerhouse uniquely
positioned to drive adoption of 4K OTT
video services, particularly through
secure delivery of professional sports
to Internet-connected devices.
4K, also known as Ultra HD (UHD),
has four times the resolution of a
typical HD broadcast. With 4K TVs
projected to represent nearly 40% of
the total TV market by 2018, coupled
with consumer demand for ever higher
quality premium video experiences, 4K
shows great promise as a technology
to enable delivery of those next
generation experiences consumers
crave.
"As 4K becomes more widely
available, consumers will want
all their content to be the highest
quality possible - wherever they are,
particularly for sports," commented
Eric Grab, Chief Technology Ofﬁcer at
NeuLion.
Powering 4K OTT
To this end, NeuLion has focused
its efforts on playback technologies

that enable secure live OTT
streaming
of
high-quality
video, up to 4K resolution using
HEVC and MPEG-DASH to the
Web, iOS, Android, smart TVs
and other devices.
Part of the company's
current offering is the NeuLion
Platform, a secure video
delivery solution that enables
pay TV operators, broadcasters
and service providers to create,
deliver and playback secure OTT video
across an array of screens.
"We're combining DivX technology
with NeuLion's managed services,
and together we'll empower major
sports organisations to deliver even
higher quality premium live streaming
experiences in 4K," says NeuLion
Executive Vice President Chris Wagner.
"Experts agree that sporting
events will drive OTT video delivery
in the future, and we look forward
to powering that global shift to a 4K
future," he added.
While consumers viewing a variety
of programming will appreciate the
extremely rich 4K video quality,
NeuLion
believes
that
sports
programming in particular is an
excellent showcase for the technology.
4K is ideal for sports video because it
presents consumers with vivid, lifelike detail, and gives service providers
an engaging way to competitively
differentiate their packages.

Video Showcase - Kazuhiro 4K (DivX HEVC Ultra HD)

Live 4K Sports Trial
As reported by Sports Video Group,
National Basketball Association (NBA)
executives got a taste of this recently
when, on January 15, 2015, NeuLion
streamed an NBA game from the O2
Arena in London, in 4K resolution at
50fps over the Internet, using Dynamic
Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH)
at 15Mbps.
NBA executives watched the video
at their ofﬁces in New York City on a
large-screen UHD TV connected to a
PC. The video, which relied on a single
4K stream, represents the ﬁrst full-4K
production trial in NBA history.

4K Deployment
4K is produced at higher bitrates
and needs to be encoded to lower
the bitrate before it can be delivered
to homes over the open Internet.
The NeuLion HEVC (H.265) codec
is well suited for compressing UHD
video; certain features in the HEVC

"As 4K becomes more
widely available, consumers
will want all their content
to be the highest quality
possible - wherever
they are, particularly
for sports"
Eric Grab
CTO, NeuLion

Video Showcase - Tears of Steel (DivX HD)

speciﬁcation such as coding block
unit sizes, slices and tiles allow for
massive parallelisation of encodes -
providing not only 40 to 50% better
compression rates, but also lower
latency than earlier generation codecs.
The hurdles don't stop there. After
encoding, the video segments have
to be packaged and delivered in a
format that is open and ﬂexible. The
DASH speciﬁcation provides a common
format for creating an adaptation
set that can be delivered to multiple
devices.
The ﬁnal step is playback. An
open and certiﬁed player stack that
is based on a common application
level interface, such as the NeuLion
DivX technology, allows for massive
deployment in the next generation
of televisions. The right selection
of technologies will allow for wide
deployment of this next generation
video experience much more rapidly
than previous eras.
NeuLion believes that recent
pioneering developments in 4K
technology, combined with increased
use of compatible broadcast cameras
and heightened consumer demand
for higher quality TV sets, will be
instrumental in facilitating consumer
adoption of 4K globally in the near
future.
"We think 4K video stands to upend
HDTV in the industry faster than
HD overtook the SD format, and
we're excited to be part of this next
revolution in video technology," Grab
concluded.
http://www.inbroadcast.com http://www.divx.com/en/hevc-showcase http://www.divx.com/en/hevc-showcase
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