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May 2007 W*USA Brings High Definition to the Web with Digital Rapids StreamZHD
A total of four streams were provided at 3.2Mbps, 1Mbps, 500Kbps and 56Kbps data rates. The streams were delivered over a 10Mbps line to Akamai, which we use as our content delivery network for both on-demand and live streams.
StreamZHD is a combination of hardware and software. In addition to ingest capabilities, the hardware provides pre-processing of the input signal including motion adaptive de-interlacing and noise reduction. By performing the pre-processing in the hardware, StreamZHD keeps this workload off the CPUs and provides outstanding visual quality in the encoded result.
The system’s tightly integrated software interface makes configuration and operation of StreamZHD easy and efficient. Unlike single-function systems or those that require the use of multiple standalone utilities for different tasks, the Digital Rapids Stream software lets us do live streaming, file-based transcoding and encoding of files for on-demand viewing from one streamlined user interface. The Stream software even lets us encode to multiple compression formats, frame sizes and bit rates simultaneously.
The ever-increasing bandwidth available to content consumers enables higher-quality viewing experiences for our audience, and enables us to differentiate our web offerings. We intend to make as much HD content as possible available through the WUSA Web site – both live events and on-demand streaming of archived clips and programs. Digital Rapids StreamZHD has given us the technical capabilities to efficiently achieve this goal.
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