NAB 2018: Harmonic Talks SaaS-Based UHD/HDR Live Sports Streaming
Anthony Burokas: We are here live on the show floor at NAB 2018 with Streaming Media. I’m here with Jean Macher from Harmonic. Tell us a little bit about what Harmonic does.
Jean Macher: Harmonic is the market leader for media processing, play outs, and video delivery in general. A software solution available as appliances or as a cloud native solution that can be deployed on private or public cloud.
Anthony Burokas: Now, one thing that I see as a growing market for streaming media producers is sports. You have a sports feed, so I guess you guys are heavy into sports.
Jean Macher: VOS is our cloud native media processing solution. Now, it's available inside VOS, and at the show we are introducing a SaaS solution for low-latency delivery of live sporting events in UHD/HDR. It's kind of a mouthful so I'm going to repeat it, a SaaS solution for low-latency streaming of live sporting events in UHD/HDR.
Anthony Burokas: Wow, so you're talking 4K, you're talking high-dynamic range, you're talking low-latency, major sports.
Jean Macher: Exactly. So, why is that important? Number one, we think that SaaS makes a lot of sense because sporting events, they are occasional by nature, they are not on all the time, right? They lend themselves very well to a usage space model, which SaaS provides. Number two, you probably wonder what exactly is low-latency? Five seconds, end-to-end from the output of the camera to the screen on the tablet. For those interested in the technology, we use CMAF to achieve such low-latency.
Anthony Burokas: Now when you say "low-latency" of five seconds, does distance matter?
Jean Macher: No. This is running in the cloud and that CMAF technology is available also on the CDNs that we use, so it can be anywhere.
Anthony Burokas: Interesting. Now, is there something else going on with VOS at NAB?
Jean Macher: What I just explained here means that now VOS can supe up OTT delivery to UHD resolution, which is one of the new things at this NAB. So, that means that, for live, for instance, the viewers will get a feel for the action in stunning UHD clarity, details, with the HDR kicker?
And the second thing I wanted to say is VOS at this show now is able also to do play out. That means that some of our customers, they can offload their play out operation to the cloud and launch a new channel, accelerate the launch of the new channel, simplify the workflow. So we think it's a very lean way to launch a new channel using VOS. It can be building a channel from scratch, but it can also be having a channel come in to VOS slightly modified, that you distribute over the top or that you send to your distribution partner.
Anthony Burokas: Interesting, interesting. So, and all of this, all this and more is available from Harmonic.
Jean Macher: Definitely. If you need more information you can always go to our website, www.harmonicinc.com, or please come to the booth we have also some time for more demos, you know, here at the show.
Anthony Burokas: You heard it here on the NAB show floor at NAB 2018. My name is Anthony Burokas for Streaming Media, thanks for watching.
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