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MillimeterThe Thriving Streaming Media Sector
Feb 1, 2003 12:00 PM, By Jeff Sauer
Thoughts from a dotcom survivor.
 VBrick’s VBStar has the ability to simultaneously record and send DVD-quality video to another IP address. |
When I attended Streaming Media East in October, I wasn't the only one there, but there certainly weren't any crowds clogging the show aisles. It's a sign of the economic times that trade shows are rarely as healthy as they were a few years ago. But the struggles of this particular industry event, now paired under the same roof with the once similarly robust Internet World, reveal that streaming is no longer the cutting-edge technology that once seemed destined to proliferate at all levels of business communication and video production.
These days, streaming and Streaming Media Expo both seem to be lingering on a railroad platform, waiting for a train that's already passed. It's technology that smacks of dotcom excess and the build-it-and-they-will-come business models that now have proven to be starry-eyed at best, if not partially to blame for the current economic climate.
So I stroll through show aisles looking for signs of life and possible video-over-IP salvation, and in one of the larger booths, an otherwise modest 10'×20', is VBrick Systems, a company I've followed for a while. The vice president of marketing, someone whom I've met on several occasions, is talking with another show attendee, but I'm in no particular rush. She's always upbeat and usually good for a story or two, so I wait for her to finish.
When she's done, we exchange friendly banter, but the conversation gives way to a mutual commiseration of the show's poor attendance, the tough economy, and a little industry gossip. Then, like a good marketer, she brings the conversation back to VBrick. “But, we're doing well,” she says with a smile. She probably means at least they're still in business and she still has a job.
“At least we're getting some good traffic,” she rationalizes.
“Well, this 10'×20' booth almost makes you an anchor,” I quip, referring to the disappointing number and sizes of the exhibitors.
“But the people who are coming by seem a lot better qualified and understand a lot more than they did a few years ago,” she adds, citing the common tradeshow consolation prize. She is probably saying that VBrick has been around long enough for people to know the name and a little bit about what they do.
Then, seemingly in passing, she tosses out, “and we had our best quarter ever last quarter.” It hits like a hammer. “No way,” I respond, not quite knowing whether she's about to make a joke about streaming-sector smashes or slumps. But she goes on talking about VBrick, as if what she just said was no big deal or that any company in this economy having a good quarter wasn't a talking point.
So I cut her off. “I think you're flat out lying to me,” I say, but now I have a big smile because I realize that she isn't. I'm tickled that she's offered virtual proof that distributing video over IP isn't all about starry-eyed dreamers, but actually has practical applications.
Appliances for Serving Up Video Communications
It shouldn't be hard to convince anyone reading Video Systems that video has unique value as a communications medium and informational resource. And if you strip away all of the hype and dotcom naiveté about streaming for its own sake, you're left with moving video over IP as another, and potentially efficient, way to distribute visual content. Moreover, shed the postage stamp stereotype, and video-over-IP can mean anything up to high-quality MPEG-2 video sent over local and wide area networks or the broader Internet and technology that makes organizations more efficient while saving money.
And that's what VBrick is doing. Whether it means saving on travel budgets, satisfying today's need for advanced security, lowering costs by more efficient training methods, or simply removing roadblocks through more efficient communication and visualization, streaming video is working, even if it's not your erstwhile dotcom's streaming.
In many ways, the trick to sending video over IP is making it easy enough for non-IP experts to do. So-called streaming media appliances or network video appliances, like their home economic namesakes, are designed to plug in, power up, and do a job. Here, that task is encoding video and audio and turning it into IP data for distribution to one or several specific locations or desktops.
These smart, typically CPU-endowed boxes (Optibase and Amnis Systems are other providers) have video and audio I/O and connect directly to a network via an Ethernet port to send video data to some other location for viewing. In many situations, if a network is running a DHCP server to automatically assign IP addresses, streaming media appliances are self-configuring and can automatically start sending video directly after powering up. If not, they may require a manual IP address configuration, but that's rarely a prohibitive task these days. Some appliances output to a video monitor for local preview. VBrick's 3000 or 6000 series products, with both an MPEG encoder and decoder, can be configured for videoconferencing (although that's not VBrick's true target market) or other live two-way communications for education, security, training, remote diagnosis, presentations, etc.
The bottom line for any such appliance is taking a video source, translating it into IP data, and effortlessly putting it onto a network. Then it can be viewed on a computer screen, television, or video monitor on the other side of the building or the other side of the world. And VBrick's success suggests that even in this economic climate, there's a market for using video to solve problems.
Data Driven
The caveat to video-over-IP is that it is lots of data relative to most LAN traffic, and administrators are sometimes leery about such encroachments if a network isn't configured to handle it. Thankfully, compared to older hubbed networks where just a few streams could usurp much of the available bandwidth, most networks today have smarter ways of controlling traffic and available bandwidth.
 Along with its MPEG encoder/decoder "bricks," VBrick offers a transcoder to Windows Media. |
Switched networks effectively divide a greater intranet into smaller pieces, each with its own bandwidth to use. Enabling multicast distribution further eliminates unnecessary bandwidth exposure by sending a single stream to a network node, which is then replicated closer to the viewing client. Almost all network routers and switches sold today are capable of multicast, but the default is often to disable multicast mode. Fortunately, it's usually a straightforward process to reconfigure. VBrick offers a series of both MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 encoder and decoder “bricks,” as well as a transcoder to Windows Media, to balance network situations with potential image quality needs.
One of VBrick's newest offerings, VBStar (which won a Video Systems Pick Hit at its introduction at NAB 2002), takes a different tact for peak efficiency and top quality (15Mbs to 17Mbs and higher). VBStar, short for the somewhat-forced VBrick Stream Transfer And Record, adds a hard drive to the mix of an otherwise realtime streaming video appliance. That introduces the possibility of recording video to disc while simultaneously streaming for live remote viewing if desired, then transferring it to another IP address for viewing at a later time.
Think of it as an IP VCR, where the remote control for playback is on a different floor or in a different city or country. Because this store-and-forward method of digital video distribution is not time-critical, VBStar can transmit video over a standard Internet connection (or even, heaven forbid, dial-up) while still maintaining top quality. Tele-stream's (another company enjoying success against today's economic grain) ClipMail line of appliances uses the same approach to send, for example, digital dailies back to production studios or advertising ideas to clients for fast review.
In addition to that point-to-point use, VBStar, like most of VBrick's other appliances, is itself a video server and can stream live or recorded video to multiple desktops, recipient bricks, or IP addresses for viewing. If one of VBStar's client IP addresses is a video-on-demand server, streams can be made available to just about anyone with the facility to view them on a LAN or the patience to download them over the net.
It's all about solving problems within the scope of today's resources, high-speed connections or slow ones. For VBrick and other streaming media appliance companies, today's goal is leveraging video in ways that make sense now, even in, or in some cases especially in, bad economic times. As much as streaming once focused on future possibilities, today's streaming needs to be about being practical in the present.
feedback
To comment on this article, email the Video Systems editorial staff at vsfeedback@primedia.com.
