In Broadcast - April 2013 - 59

ISSUE 18 - APRIL 2013 | WWW.INBROADCAST.COM

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

N E W S

InMEDIA

Keeping One Step Ahead With On
Demand Video Streaming Technology
One of the key factors in the success of an organisation is its ability to adapt to new market conditions.
This can be driven by customer demand or by advances in technology…

By Lorna Garrett
Director, Garland Partners

or video, the challenge is to
be able to deliver your content,
whether live or on-demand, to
the vast array of computer, TV
and mobile devices currently
on the market – whilst doing it
economically and providing the
best quality of experience.
Firstly look at what versatility you
need – do you need to offer both live
and on-demand streaming? Typically
these use different workﬂows but
there are products available now
such as the Media Excel HERO
5000 platform that can offer both
ﬁle and live transcoding in the same
platform, with both IP and SDI
inputs and an array of multi-format

adaptive outputs.
You may be after scalability to
achieve incredible density in a
very small form factor – take the
Allegro AL2400 transcoding 1RU
platform that can transcode up to
18 HD channels to up to 200 output
channels. Platforms these days allow
you to add additional transcoding
modules into the same 1RU chassis
to increase the video throughput,
great when your business is growing.
Then there is the question of
whether to invest CAPEX in your
own hardware infrastructure or take
advantage of an OPEX model of
cloud based encoding. Better still,
could you use a mix of both and have

HERO 5000 for Media Excel box

The Garland team offer technical advice on the right video solutions to suit
your project

a seamless management system to
handle the robustness of a carriergrade appliance solution with the
elasticity of a cloud-based platform?
Here Media Excel have expanded
their HERO offering to give HERO VS,
a virtual appliance for cloud-based
services with a uniﬁed HMS (HERO
Management System) taking care of
both physical and cloud instances.
Media Excel and Allegro are
supported in the UK by their technical

solutions reseller Garland Partners
Limited. With ten years experience
working with the leading suppliers
to the video industry, our team can
offer you invaluable technical advice
on what is the right solution for your
video project.
Together with demo equipment
and in-depth knowledge on our
products we will have you set up
and running quickly and efficiently.

A Direct Interactive Path From Television To Living Room
G

erman Company iPharro
GmbH will showcase some
exciting new developments at
NAB 2013. The company has a
long and successful history in
Video Fingerprinting Technologies,
originally sourced from the world
famous Fraunhofer Organisation
(inventors of MP3).
Market leading top class
clients like Nielsen (Germany)
and ComHouse (Japan), just to
mention two, are attracted by the
beneﬁts of using iPharro’s reliable
and robust solutions for the likes of
Advertisement Monitoring.
iPharro’s 2013 new features mark
a break-through in interactive TV
and end client communication via
second screen. Not only can they
impressively show how to generate
and distribute ‘Trigger’ signals,
driven by any scene on the TV and
sent to clients worldwide within a
few seconds, they can also identify
the channel the end-user is currently
watching. All the user has to do is
record the TV screen with his smart

phone camera for less than one
second and his channel is identified.
iPharro is able to provide this
capability with a truly remarkable
robustness, almost totally
independent of challenging light
or contrast conditions. Unlike
audio methods that have been on
the market and that are implicitly
sensitive to noise, this new
iPharro video-based technology is
signiﬁcantly superior in reliability and
speed. The potential applications
of having immediate knowledge of

a client’s channel in combination
with the use of the additional Trigger
feature engage consumers into a
dialogue when viewing specific
scenes of interest.
Consumers are attracted
via bonus materials to identify
themselves by using the channel
detection feature, and can then be
optionally involved in an individual
dialogue on his second screen
device, augmenting the general web
activities of the company. This suite
of features offers a new arsenal of

iPharro Site Promotion for Brands – How it works. The missing link between
TV commercials and the online second screen experience

interactivity that truly brings product
information from TV interactively into
the client’s living rooms.
iPharro has several pilot
installations with clients that
are today already successfully
experiencing the beneﬁts of this
new approach.
In addition to these new and
exciting developments, iPharro is
also demonstrating their new ‘Logo
Detection’ feature. This feature can
detect and thus count Logos as they
appear, e.g. during sports events, be
it on banners or moving devices like
racing cars. This information has an
interesting value for sports and other
events wherein logos are prominent.
It makes the event’s branding
impact, and thus its value to the
brand, measurable, if combined
with synchronised purchase or web
traffic measures.
With all those innovations iPharro
clearly demonstrates the strength
and potential of its underlying
Fingerprinting Algorithms.

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In Broadcast - April 2013

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