Envivio Helps Build the Future of 4K Video at NAB
[Note: This sponsored interview was recorded at NAB 2014.]
4K might not be ready for consumer adoption, noted Julien Signès, Envivio's CEO, at the 2014 NAB conference, but this is still an exciting time for ultra-high resolution video. Much of that has to do with HEVC, which will bring bandwidth savings to any resolution. Streaming Media says down with Signès at NAB to talk about what Envivio was demonstrating.
"We think that 4K’s an exciting development," Signès said. "Obviously consumer adoption is not yet there, so this is something in development. I think what we are most excited about is the HEVC portion, because it promises real efficiency for the service, whether it’s 4K or existing services, especially on the mobile and OTT space, where bandwidth is scarce, and also maybe satellite."
Envivio also had an exciting cloud-based end-to-end solution to show off, one that lets broadcasters get to market quickly.
"A lot of people in the encoding business ported their offline encoding file-based workflow to the cloud," Signès said. "We wanted to do something different. We wanted to offer an end-to-end solution so that we literally have a OTT in a box to be offered the cloud. So in the case of that operator, we launched a first customer with that approach, where we work with a partner called 1 Mainstream, and together we’re able to offer an end-to-end solution in the cloud."
For more news for Envivio, watch the video below.
Eric: Hi. I’m Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen. I’m the editor of StreamingMedia.com, and I’m here at the NAB show, 2014, with Julien Signès, who is the CEO of Envivio. Good to see you. As our readers know, Envivio has long been at the forefront of video encoding, and in the last couple years has expanded beyond that to get into other areas of end-to-end video offerings. So they’ve got a lot to talk about here at NAB, including, as is no surprise to anyone, some developments in 4K and HEVC. So what’s new in 4K?
Julien: Well, I think what’s new is obviously promise of a better user experience at home. We think that 4K’s an exciting development. Obviously consumer adoption is not yet there, so this is something in development. I think what we are most excited about is the HEVC portion, because it promises really efficiency for the service, whether it’s 4K or existing services, especially on the mobile and OTT space, where bandwidth is scarce, and also maybe satellite. We think HEVC’s going to play a role independently of 4K. So we see a lot of attraction, interest, in HEVC, interest in 4K, and we, with our software solution, believe that we are the forefront of that. We control our own software implementation end-to-end, so we’re able to offer a great solution with a great time to market for customers.
Eric: Right. And software does seem to be the direction that more and more people are heading when it comes to this sort of encoding and processing. You mentioned customers, you mentioned people who are interested. Talk about the kind of momentum that you’re seeing in uptake right from some of your recent customer announcements.
Julien: Absolutely. We just signed on with MediaCorp, a big customer. MediaCorp Singapore, in this case. Two customer OTT. We announce a deal for Tier 1 operators in Europe, with Apple TV, to deliver premium TV sports channels live to an Apple TV box, and that’s a very exciting development where we believe that could be replicated in many places. And so generally we see a lot of traction. We have big customers like Comcast, and Verizon has been a big contributor to our revenue last year. Continue to expand their systems, and we do this software-based multiscreen delivery, which as you said, is getting a lot of momentum/
Eric: Absolutely. And finally, what about the new cloud offerings that Envivio has been working on and really advancing in recent months?
Julien: Absolutely. So a lot of people in the encoding business ported their offline encoding file-based workflow to the cloud. We wanted to do something different. We wanted to offer an end-to-end solution so that we literally have a OTT in a box to be offered the cloud. So in the case of that operator, we launched a first customer with that approach, where we work with a partner called 1 Mainstream, and together we’re able to offer an end-to-end solution in the cloud. In a matter of weeks we’re able to launch from scratch an Apple TV service, end-to-end live with subscription DRM, user tracking, great reader quality, so I think it’s a very exciting accelerator of the business. People can in no time launch new premium channels on demand, live content, protected content.And so we think it’s just an exciting trend. And it’s, for us, it’s very compatible with our software. We’ve always been around software reader processing. Cloud is just the next step. So we virtualize all our software, we take in our software. Now we can be running in a private or public cloud.
Eric: Excellent. Very cool. We’ve written a lot about Envivio, and so you can read about them on StreamingMedia.com, or of course, at Envivio.com. Thanks again for taking your time today, Julien.
Julien: Thank you.
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