With the latest software release for the Apple Phone now making it easier to support streaming video, Envivio is demonstrating a complete encoding solution called iLiveTV. The 3.0 update for the iPhone and iPod Touch operating system offers a number of enhancements, including a player providing support for adaptive streaming video within the browser.
“iLiveTV is the complete solution for mobile operators and content owners ready to take advantage of the opportunity created by Apple’s new game-changing video format for the iPhone,” said Envirio chief executive Julien Signès.
The iLiveTV system enables operators to offer iPhone users multiple channels of live television over 3G and Wi-Fi networks, as well as on-demand streaming. It supports the advanced capabilities of the new mobile video format in the Apple iPhone OS 3.0 to optimise full screen playback and dynamically adapt to available bandwidth. iLiveTV is optimized for the native iPhone 3.0 video player and requires no additional software be installed on an iPhone or iPod Touch with the latest version of the operating system, which is available from Apple iTunes as an upgrade for existing owners.
Video encoding is powered by the Envivio 4Caster C4 system, which can receive standard definition sources as an MPEG transport stream, or optionally through analogue or digital interfaces and simultaneously encodes and protects programming for delivery at multiple bitrates using H.264 compression.
Multi-profile encoding provides seamless delivery of the best picture quality by adapting automatically to fluctuations in network bandwidth. iLiveTV also includes all of the necessary software components to deliver protected video from a standard web server using HTTP adaptive streaming.
A private viewing for informitv of a range of French channels worked well over a WiFi network, providing uninterrupted high-quality video that automatically conforms to vertical or horizontal screen orientation. When turned horizontally, a simple vertical list of channels turns into a coverflow carousel featuring dynamically generated thumbnails of the available channels, using the latest iPhone Safari CSS extensions.
It is possible to pause live channels, or skip back thirty seconds at a time, and then return to the live feed. As with other video applications on the iPhone, the quality is generally far better than most mobile television or video services, because of the higher resolution of the display.
Envivio has been quick to demonstrate its solution, viewable as soon as the iPhone operating system software became available. The video plays back in the browser, which has the advantage that there is no need to download an additional application, but this is more limiting than a native application, which was previously required to support streaming video.
The main benefit of the Envivio system is that all the necessary back end compression is provided in a single solution based on its 4Caster encoder.
Broadcasters or service providers wishing to find out more should contact either informitv or Envivio directly.