A Healthy Convergence of Conferencing and Streaming Media

Scalability and Quality
One of Whalen’s design goals was to be able to scale the solution as the business grows without need to re-architect the streaming media publishing system or investing in expensive MPEG-2 encoding hardware. With the current design, Truestar Health can record up to 10 separate simultaneous point-to-point or multipoint conference calls. An H.323 session can be established over any IP network, regardless of where the studios or content sources are located. When connected to the network and provided an IP address, the HD-100 sends out a beacon to automatically locate the MXM server. Configuration is fully automated between the codec and the MXM.

Then, the VCG performs a full H.323 "cap" (capabilities) exchange with the other endpoint(s) on a call-by-call basis, determining the capabilities and the bandwidth available across the network. By this method, the VCG participates in each and every call at the highest level of audio and video quality of which the combination of endpoints in that call are capable.

While this approach to content capture and publishing may be unconventional in streaming media circles, Truestar Health is out to prove that it works reliably and permits the producers of content to focus on the subject matter experts, not the technology behind the scenes.