Bestfrontseat Comes Out of Stealth Mode With Advanced Compression
"Imagine an image of a butterfly on a flower," John says. "That's what the human eye sees and everything else is just fill-in. Our codec compresses the butterfly and the flower for example at 20:1 but compresses the grass immediately behind it at 150:1 and the trees further in the background at 250-300:1. That allows us to dramatically reduce bandwidth requirements.
"Most compression schemes are based around H.264 but that's a cul-de-sac waiting to happen," he argues. "It's not compression technology that has driven the use of online video but increased bandwidth capacity providing end users faster broadband speeds. With online video volumes exploding, new forms of compression are needed to keep up with demand."
Disaster Recovery Mode and Other Features
Bestfrontseat also claims additional technology benefits. If a live event such as a music performance were to suffer a local power outage, a disaster recovery mode will flip into action.
A message explaining the situation alerts all viewers and the option to watch related VOD content is offered. Once power is back on, normal streaming service is resumed. "We are the only company in the world that has that facility," John claims.
Viewers can send text messages to be displayed on other viewer screens, or at the live venue on giant screens; viewers can enter chat rooms while watching live; e-commerce is enabled by allowing details of tracks or acts to be overlaid on the stream with the ability to complete a transaction without taking the viewer away from the event; VOD is enabled shortly after the beginning of the live event.
"The quickest we have set up at an event is 7 minutes after arriving," says John. "So long as we can identify an IP address we can broadcast anywhere literally in minutes."
Pay-Per-Use Model
The pay-per-use business model means that its services and technology can be hired at a flat monthly rate with additional costs accrued where bandwidth demands are exceeded. "It's the same tariff model as the cell phone," says John. "You buy a day or monthly package, so you know what you are getting, and pay for additional streams as necessary."
Clients include live music event The Lockout and the broadcast of the The International Ballroom Dancing Championships from Blackpool. Cologne-based World Trade Centre TV, (which broadcasts to 334 centres worldwide), is exploring methods to implant BestFrontSeat technology into its network.
It is also about to announce a U.S. music label which will use Bestfrontseat technology to stream up over 20 live music events annually.
"We market ourselves as the FedEx of video," he says. "Our network boasts direct connections to more than 800 networks. And since most of these edge server connections use 10GigE technology, content is delivered straight to the local networks that audiences use every day, enabling content to bypass the often-congested public internet connections. No matter how challenging your delivery requirements, how large your files or how massive and diverse your video content library, our server and network infrastructure can support your business."