Wowza Demonstrates Enhancements to Wowza Media Server Platform at 2012 NAB Show

By | April 12, 2012

EVERGREEN, Colo. — April 12, 2012 — Wowza Media Systems, LLC, the “Any Screen Done Right™” media server software company, today announced that it will demonstrate a set of enhancements to Wowza Media Server® 3 at the 2012 NAB Show. The newest version of the award-winning software platform, Wowza Media Server 3.1 includes refinements to the Network DVR™ (nDVR) AddOn, an audio-only option for the Wowza Transcoder™ AddOn, and Dynamic Transcoder Overlays.

“The Fandor experience is based on the ability to watch great films anytime, and Wowza Media Server never lets us down. For our social media outreach, we can publicly serve scenes and trailers without having to encode them separately, which saves us time and money,” said Dan Aronson, CEO of Fandor.com. “Wowza software also allows us to serve multiple formats from the same video sources. We are excited for the new enhancements in 3.1 that are going to make the Fandor experience even better.”

The Wowza nDVR AddOn, now out of beta, is an innovative live-stream cache that stores content in a normalized format accessible to Wowza Media Server 3 for any-screen playout. With Wowza nDVR, Wowza licensees can deliver live linear streams as time-shifted services to any screen, capabilities that have been shown to increase both viewer engagement and revenues. Wowza nDVR also supports trick-play features such as live-stream pause, rewind, and resume, and enables content publishers and service providers to develop the kind of premium catch-up TV services that both enhance and individualize the viewer experience.

“With Wowza Media Server's nDVR functionality, we have been able to increase both audience engagement and viewer experiences,” said Sandy Thailing, director of media technology at Hillcrest Covenant Church. “The Wowza nDVR AddOn has been instrumental in our ability to deliver live church services as time-shifted streams to any screen, and we are truly impressed with the full production version of Wowza nDVR.”

The Wowza Transcoder AddOn’s audio-only option gives users the ability to pay a significantly lower “audio-only” price when using the Wowza Transcoder AddOn with streams that do not contain video. Using commodity hardware, the audio-only option transforms incoming live audio streams from encoders, IP cameras, IPTV headends, and other live sources into multiple bitrate H.264 stream sets for adaptive bitrate delivery. The audio-only option of Wowza Transcoder can also be used for non-adaptive streaming with any transport protocol supported by Wowza Media Server 3.

New Dynamic Transcoder Overlays allow customers to use compositing to overlay text, images, motion graphics, and secondary video sources instantly onto streams passing through the Wowza Transcoder AddOn. The feature can be used in many cases, including the dynamic insertion of advertising, titling, sporting event scores, and picture-in-picture video. It also allows single-display viewing of multicamera broadcast and surveillance feeds on any screen.  Dynamic Transcode Overlays can be manually configured or pre-programmed based on external events, making this a powerful new tool for adding premium TV-like experiences at commodity prices.

“Wowza continues to focus media delivery by reducing the complexity and expense resulting from a multitude of client-specific platforms, adaptive bitrate technologies, and proprietary media players,” said Dave Stubenvoll, Wowza Media Systems CEO and cofounder. “Wowza Media Server 3.1 is our latest contribution to that effort. We’ve made hundreds of improvements to the software to address customer needs, making it easier and more affordable for our customers to provide a rich user experience, whether they’re streaming catch-up TV services or live audio.”

In another move to help advance media delivery, Wowza Media Systems has also become a member of the MPEG-DASH Promoters Group (DASH-PG), an industry consortium working to promote the adoption of the MPEG-DASH standard in the market. Wowza joined DASH-PG in an effort to help avoid fragmentation of the multimedia HTTP streaming market – one of the major challenges facing content and service providers today. DASH-PG believes the use of this open international standard for multimedia delivery over Internet will accelerate market growth; enable interoperability between content preparation tools, servers, CDNs, and end devices; and reduce the cost of delivery.

Wowza Media Server® 3 is the industrial-strength, high-performance software that simultaneously streams live and on-demand media to any screen — Adobe® Flash® and Microsoft® Smooth Streaming-enabled computers and devices; iPhone®/iPad®, Android™ and other smartphones and tablets; smart TVs; as well as IPTV/OTT set-top endpoints. The software provides a single extensible platform for a variety of high-value features, including live transcoding for adaptive bitrate (ABR) streaming, any-screen, time-shifted playback, and premium content delivery with multiplatform digital rights management (DRM). Wowza Media Systems introduced the paradigm-busting Wowza Media Server 3 last fall, and it quickly won awards for changing the way adaptive multibitrate streaming is delivered to viewers everywhere.

Wowza Media Server 3.1 is on display at the 2012 NAB Show in Wowza Media Systems booth SU9702. A free trial edition of Wowza Media Server 3.1, which provides access to the full, unrestricted functionality of Wowza Media Server 3 and its AddOns, is available at www.wowza.com.

 

About Wowza Media Systems

Wowza Media Systems, LLC (www.wowza.com) is the “Any Screen Done Right™” media server software company delivering an industrial-strength infrastructure for streaming live video, video-on-demand, live recording, and video chat. Wowza® has a singular focus on delivering high-performance media server software to service providers, media properties, enterprises, and other organizations serious about delivering video to any digital screen — computer, mobile phone, or home TV. More than 100,000 global licensees in entertainment, social media, advertising, enterprise, education, government, and Internet commerce have deployed Wowza Media Server software to date. Wowza is privately held with headquarters in Evergreen, Colo.

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Wowza and related marks are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Wowza Media Systems Inc. Third-party product names and related marks are either registered trademarks or trademarks of such third parties.