Skitter is pleased to have been honored with a TelcoTV 2010 Vision Award in a ceremony held earlier today. Skitter’s Acclaim Video Encoders won the Vision Award for Innovation in Encoding. The Acclaim encoder family features an invention that brings variable bitrate (VBR) video streaming to multicast IPTV and Internet TV environments. A provisional patent application has been filed for the invention, called Prioritized VBR™ (PVBR™).
PVBR is a new method of streaming video that maintains the compression benefits of variable bitrate video while still being able to transport streams as if they were compressed at a constant bitrate. Skitter’s Prioritized VBR invention adds rate shaping features to the Acclaim video encoder that allow the operator to choose the average bitrate of individual VBR streams and to cap the peak bit rate at a hard limit that will not exceed the capacity of ADSL network switches. PVBR also greatly reduces buffering requirements, virtually eliminating interruptions in video stream delivery. In addition, PVBR offers a side benefit for managing network security, preventing bursts in VBR bitrates that can be misidentified as a broadcast storm, causing the network to invoke security measures.
The Acclaim encoders offer live MPEG-4 H.264 AVC video encoding at any resolution, from 480i standard definition to 1080i high definition. The Acclaim’s standards-compliant video streams are highly efficient, with HD video compressed at an average 3.5 Mbps with peaks to 5 Mbps, and SD video compressed at 1.4 Mbps with peaks to 1.8 Mbps. Multiple video input sources are supported, including satellite content, off-air RF broadcasts, and other live or pre-recorded content. ATSC and NTSC receivers are built in, reducing costs and complexity, streamlining signal routing, and simplifying head-end redundancy planning. The encoders are a part of the end-to-end Skitter.TV hybrid IPTV/OTT video platform, and can also be used as a stand-alone solution for live streaming of Web video and in other IPTV installations.
The TelcoTV Vision Awards are juried by leading industry executives with NTCA, analysts with Heaving Reading and editors with telecommunications media outlet Light Reading.
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