Giraffic AVA Unlocks Seamless Virtual Reality Streaming for Apps and Mobile Devices
New AVA acceleration for immersive streams doubles the resolution and minimizes buffering to help cut the VR cord; Demos Available at CES 2017
TEL AVIV, Israel(07 Dec 2016)
Giraffic, the leader in Adaptive Video Acceleration (AVA) technologies for consumer electronics device manufacturers and content service providers, today announced an extension of its AVA technology that vastly improves the quality and stability of streaming virtual reality (VR) content. This tailored acceleration enhances VR streams, even over less than ideal Wi-Fi or cellular connections, allowing manufacturers and immersive content service providers and developers to provide flawless high-quality, untethered VR experiences, in addition to Giraffic AVA video-on-demand (VOD) and live-streaming offerings.
Giraffic AVA is a software solution that empowers content service providers, streaming platforms developers and CE device manufacturers to overcome unstable cellular connections, Wi-Fi and network congestion challenges. The technology improves network throughput and adaptive bitrate (ABR) playback for video streaming requests up to 200% and reduces buffering pauses by up to 80%, to enable higher quality uninterrupted viewing experience without network or server-side integration. The updated AVA offers customized multi-streaming capabilities to support VR and 360 degree video and can work across split streams for each angle of a video. In addition, AVA customizes the number of streams open during the acceleration process to optimize consumer experience.
“VR revenues are expected grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 73% over the next 5 years, however, in order to achieve this VR must provide users with a quality experience,” says Michael Goodman, Director Digital Media at Strategy Analytics. “Video is a bandwidth hog in the best of circumstances, VR video is a several magnitudes worse. VR video that has banding, artifacts, starts and stops, or worst of all, induces motion sickness as a result of the compression necessary to deliver it will quickly turn off VR users.”
The immersive video of virtual reality content generates 3 to 10 times higher bitrates, which is nearly impossible to stream on unreliable and inconsistent cellular or WiFi networks. By improving the resolution of content up to 200% over existing network connections and offering a 300% longer viewing period at the highest quality, Giraffic AVA provides the best possibility to watch immersive VR content from start to finish.
“In addition to smartphone-powered VR, we're starting to see the industry shift towards wireless standalone headsets on the high-end devices," says Yoel Zanger, CEO of Giraffic. “To view VR the way it’s intended, the experience must be uninterrupted, untethered and incredibly high resolution like UHD 4K content offers. With the VR extension of our AVA solution, we bridge this gap between the immersive app providers and the consumer’s devices worldwide.”
AVA is available to content developers through a simple SDK integration, and for consumer electronics manufacturers with device-side integration. Demos will be held at CES 2017 at the Westgate Hotel (by appointment only). To schedule a demo of AVA for virtual reality, please contact: inna@giraffic.com.
About Giraffic
Giraffic is the inventor of Adaptive Video Acceleration (AVA) – a patented client-side video experience technology that complements the existing video delivery ecosystem. AVA network throughput optimization and video playback shaping technology enables consumer electronic (CE) devices and Content Providers’ Apps to deliver High Definition video, 4K and VR, without re-buffering pauses or streaming resolution reduction. With 10’s of millions of devices in over 150 countries, Giraffic ground breaking AVA technology has become the de-facto standard on Smart TVs – in 1 of 3 Smart TVs that were shipped in 2015, and validated and adopted by the world’s leading manufacturers, such as LG and Samsung. Giraffic technology is now making ways into mobile devices, VR and apps, and is available in the next generation of CE devices, including Smart TVs, set-top-boxes, tablets and smartphones, as well as an SDK that is interoperable with content providers’ apps. Giraffic was featured in Deloitte's 2016 Technology Fast 50, a list of the fastest growing technology companies in Israel, as one of the Top 10 Rising Stars.