IBC: ViewCast Streaming With H.264 to Adobe Flash

ViewCast Corp. has unveiled the Niagara 2120, a low-cost, easy-to-use media appliance that supports H.264 streaming via the Adobe Flash platform. ViewCast will show the appliance at IBC 2009.

It’s aimed at corporate, government, education, worship and athletic settings seeking a plug-and-play platform for streaming video content across enterprise networks or over the Internet.

“The Niagara 2120 delivers exceptional value and powerful capabilities that enable customers of all levels of technical expertise to quickly and easily stream high quality live and on-demand video,” said ViewCast President and CEO Dave Stoner. “With seamless support for H.264 streaming, the Niagara 2120 expands ViewCast’s leadership in the streaming media appliance market and equips customers to leverage ViewCast’s industry-renowned capabilities on the Adobe Flash Platform.”

“ViewCast solutions based on the Adobe Flash Platform enable the delivery of rich, real-time media experiences to an ever-growing audience of consumers that rely on Adobe Flash technology for high quality video over the Web,” said Bill Rusitzky, senior director of global media alliances for Adobe. “The Niagara 2120 is the latest example of ViewCast’s continued technological innovation and commitment to providing high-performance video streaming solutions based on Adobe Flash technologies.”

The Niagara 2120 shares many of the features found in ViewCast’s other professional-grade streaming media encoders, and is optimized for simplified set-up and operation. Users simply set the desired streaming parameters via the intuitive Web interface, then initiate one or more streams simultaneously from the front panel “Stream” button.

With support for H.264 streaming to the Adobe Flash Platform, customers are afforded high-performance streaming capabilities across a broad range of bandwidths to elevate the quality and impact of their Internet video programming.

It comes standard with ViewCast SimulStream technology, which enables a single video source to generate several video streams simultaneously—in multiple resolutions and bit rates—with each stream configured differently for laptops, cell phones, or mobile devices. ViewCast’s Niagara SCX streaming media management software is also included.

Like all Niagara appliances, the Niagara 2120 features image scaling, cropping, de-interlacing, inverse telecine and closed caption rendering capabilities. The Niagara 2120 provides flexible connectivity options including component, Y/C (S-Video), and composite video inputs, as well as balanced and unbalanced stereo audio.