WALTHAM, Mass. and PHILADELPHIA—Zixi and Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS) today announced a strategic new integration to deliver C-band replacement solutions for linear broadcasters and content distributors. The collaboration brings together the end-to-end video management capabilities provided by Comcast Media360 with the Zixi Software Platform to give operators a direct migration path from C-band satellite to IP-based content distribution, they said.

With the C-band satellite transition underway, programmers and distributors are exploring solutions to migrate linear workflows to IP while maintaining the kind of reliability, rights compliance, and affiliate distribution control that C-band has historically provided. At the core of the joint Zixi and CTS solution is a technical integration between the Zixi Software Platform and Comcast Media360, which provides customers with a 24/7 managed service backed by the proven reliability and scale of Comcast Technology Solutions.

“The C-band transition is not a distant deadline for our customers. It is a decision they are making now. Working with Comcast Technology Solutions means that we can offer broadcasters a solution that does not ask them to trade rights compliance and reliability for IP flexibility. The integration between the Zixi Software Platform and Comcast Media360 is the kind of joint engineering that makes a real operational difference," said Marc Aldrich, CEO, Zixi.

"Broadcasters are looking for ways to operate their linear channels more efficiently while continuing to scale distribution as part of their C-band transition efforts,” said Bart Spriester, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Streaming, Broadcast, and Advertising at Comcast Technology Solutions. “Comcast Media360 helps make that possible across broadcast and IP workflows and, together with Zixi, delivers a satellite replacement option that gives programmers and distributors a manageable path to IP and unlocks new monetization opportunities."

Notably, CTS’ linear rights management normalizes rights metadata using the SCTE 224 standard, enabling content providers to manage alternate content delivery, ad insertion windows, and audience-based content restrictions across broadcast and streaming destinations. Zixi ZEN Master orchestrates the live video workflow across cloud or hybrid network environments, with native support for SCTE-35/224 signaling, blackout enforcement, and schedule-driven source switching.

Together, the integrated platforms can provide broadcasters a single, intelligent, rights-aware distribution chain that combines signal orchestration, affiliate distribution, and rights enforcement enabling new monetization and distribution capability, while removing the dependency on satellite infrastructure and maintaining compliance and control.

As C-band satellite capacity is reclaimed and transition deadlines approach, the need for end-to-end IP workflows has become a near-term business imperative for broadcasters, the companies said, adding that the combined Zixi and CTS solution gives broadcasters a migration path that preserves existing investment in rights management infrastructure while moving to the flexibility and cost structure that IP distribution offers and simplifying the path from ingest to monetization.

WALTHAM, Mass.—Zixi will demonstrate how organizations can modernize live video workflows, transition from legacy infrastructure and scale distribution and monetization with greater control, reliability, and cost efficiency during the 2026 NAB Show, April 18-22, at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

“The industry is moving quickly toward IP-based distribution as broadcasters reassess satellite and legacy delivery models,” said Zixi CEO Marc Aldrich. “At NAB 2026, Zixi will demonstrate how our platform supports the modernization and evolution of live video workflows that includes real-world satellite replacement strategies, enabling customers to deploy flexible, reliable, and interoperable workflows across hybrid environments.”

The company’s demos, in its booth and the booths of partners around the show floor, will illustrate centralized control and orchestration, dynamic market switching for flexible real-time content distribution, end-to-end IP-based contribution and distribution workflows as scalable alternatives to satellite delivery, and seamless interoperability across partner ecosystems in real-world deployment scenarios.

Zixi will also host AWS Builder Lab sessions where attendees can build an end-to-end broadcast pipeline in AWS using the Zixi platform and ZEN Master, including deploying a broadcaster, ingesting content, creating distribution channels, building HLS workflows with AWS Media Services, and applying rights management controls.

The company will also participate in the Satellite Replacement Leadership breakfast during the NAB Show.

The company’s live booth demos will include:

• Satellite transition for broadcasters: reliable, cost-efficient IP-based alternatives to traditional satellite delivery.
• Satellite transition for sports entities: flexible, cloud-enabled workflows supporting live sports contribution and distribution.
• Ingest for digital platforms and vMVPDs: aggregation, normalization, and processing of live feeds from multiple sources.
• B2B distribution for content owners: secure, scalable distribution of workflows delivering live content.
• Live event contribution and processing: end-to-end workflows for live event contribution, processing and delivery.

See Zixi at 2026 NAB Show booth W2057.

To register for the Zixi AWS Builder Lab click here.

To register for the Satellite Replacement Leadership breakfast, click here.

More information is available on the company’s website.

LONDON and WALTHAM, Mass.—A notable new study finds that broadcasters are rebuilding live operations workflows around IP delivery as satellite and dedicated fibre distribution decline. Live sports is one of the most important areas where the shift is having a major operational impact.

The new study from Caretta Research produced in partnership with Zixi found that the shift is already transforming live sports production. By moving contribution feeds and master control operations to IP and cloud infrastructure, broadcasters can scale coverage beyond the limits of traditional outside broadcast trucks and control rooms, enabling many more simultaneous events., the study found.

"IP delivery is fundamentally changing the economics and flexibility of live video distribution," said Robert Ambrose, CEO and co-founder, and the report's author at Caretta Research. "Broadcasters are moving away from fixed satellite and fiber infrastructure toward software-defined workflows that allow them to scale production, reach new distribution partners and respond much more quickly to changing audience demand."

Broadcasters and rights holders, including Sky and the NHL, are already using IP contribution feeds and cloud-based master control rooms to expand coverage, deliver additional camera angles, and produce highlights and streaming feeds more efficiently, the researchers reported.

"Broadcasters are moving beyond simply replacing satellite circuits with IP transport," said Marc Aldrich, CEO of Zixi. "They are rebuilding live operations around flexible, cloud-based workflows that allow them to scale events, reach new distribution partners and maintain broadcast-grade reliability across global networks."

The report, "Unlocking Live Video Workflows with IP: Transforming the Economics and User Experience of Live Video Delivery," examines how broadcasters, sports leagues and media companies are replacing traditional satellite and fiber infrastructure with scalable IP and cloud-based workflows for live video contribution and distribution.

The researchers noted that historically, broadcasters relied on satellite transponders and private fiber circuits to deliver live video feeds. While reliable, these systems require long-term capacity commitments and significant operational cost. IP delivery over internet networks and cloud infrastructure offers a more flexible alternative, allowing broadcasters to scale workflows and manage multiple live events simultaneously.

The report notes that the drivers behind this transition vary across regions. In the United States, the ongoing reallocation and reduction of C-band satellite spectrum is accelerating the need for alternative distribution approaches. In other markets, cost pressures, expanding streaming distribution and demand for more flexible event production are encouraging broadcasters to adopt IP-based delivery.

Live sports is one of the areas where IP workflows are having the greatest operational impact. By combining IP contribution feeds with cloud-based master control rooms, broadcasters can scale production beyond the physical limits of outside broadcast trucks and control rooms.

Organizations such as Sky and the NHL are using IP workflows to deliver more simultaneous events, support additional camera angles, enable instant replay and distribute content to global streaming platforms and affiliates.

The research also highlights the importance of enterprise platforms that provide monitoring, orchestration and automation across complex IP workflows. Platforms such as the Zixi Platform enable broadcasters to manage multi-protocol delivery and maintain reliability across global distribution networks.

For channel owners, IP distribution is also opening new commercial opportunities, including expanding global reach to new partners, launching localized channel variants and enabling dynamic ad insertion within IP-based workflows.

Caretta Research concludes that IP delivery is reshaping broadcast operations by enabling scalable cloud production, more efficient global distribution and greater operational flexibility for media organizations.

The white paper is available for download at https://www.carettaresearch.com/downloads/unlocking-live-video-workflows-with-ip.

WALTHAM, Mass.—Zixi, a provider of IP-based video transport software, said it has hired Heather Mellish as vice president, global sales.

Most recently VP of partner sales at data observability startup Hydrolix, Mellish is tasked with leading Zixi’s global revenue growth strategy, the company said. She is responsible for new business development, renewals and expansion across all regions and customer segments. She will focus on building and scaling the company’s global sales organization while implementing sales processes and forecasting metrics, the company said.

Mellish will also work closely with teams across Zixi to align go-to-market execution, strengthen relationships with enterprise customers and ensure a healthy global revenue pipeline, the company said.

“Heather joins Zixi at a pivotal moment in our growth,” Zixi CEO Marc Aldrich said. “She brings a rare combination of deep domain expertise in cloud, edge and media infrastructure, along with a proven ability to scale global sales and partner ecosystems. Her leadership will be instrumental as we continue to strengthen Zixi’s position in the market.”

At Hydrolix, Mellish built and scaled global partnerships with such major cloud and distribution providers as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Akamai, Zixi said. Before that, she worked for more than six years at AWS, leading go-to-market initiatives for edge services, including CloudFront, security, and media, and helping to drive some of its largest customer sales efforts, according to Zixi.

Earlier in her career, Mellish held a range of sales, go-to-market and media distribution roles over 17 years at Level 3 Communications/CenturyLink, where she developed deep expertise in CDN, video transport and enterprise network platforms, Zixi said.

“I’ve spent my career building teams, programs and partnerships that deliver real customer value,” Mellish said. “Zixi sits at the intersection of cloud, media and mission-critical video delivery, and I’m excited to help scale the business globally. I’m grateful for the opportunity to join the Zixi team and contribute to the company’s next phase of growth.”

Zixi provides software solutions for delivering broadcast-quality live video over IP networks for broadcasters, sports leagues and service providers around the world. Its Zixi Platform enables such workflows as contribution, processing, distribution and delivery across cloud and network environments.

SAN DIEGO—Visaic has deep roots in video and sports media. Our team of industry veterans has worked with some of the biggest brands in sports. We founded the company in 2020 to build a fast-growing sports business anchored by the Visaic Interactive Platform (VIP), an AI-powered engine that helps sports properties own their audience and elevate their brand.

Today, VIP is a fully managed, turnkey solution built on three core pillars: Fan Experience, Data IQ and Monetization. We deliver premium fan experiences across any device, apply advanced data science to deepen engagement, and provide flexible hybrid monetization models. VIP is purpose-built for sports, and we believe it is one of the most advanced platforms on the market.

To support VIP at true sports scale, we needed a reliable and flexible live-video workflow foundation—in 2025 alone, we surpassed 55,000 live games. During peak periods, we manage close to 2,000 games a week, so operating at this volume requires a partner that can support large-scale, flexible ingest and full automation.

API Forward
We evaluated several workflow technologies early in our development, but Zixi offered the combination of reliability, automation and partnership that we required. Zixi gives us the reliability and insight we need to scale efficiently. With a unified view of our live workflows, we have been able to grow distribution while keeping operational complexity firmly in check.

Three factors made Zixi the right choice for us. The first was the API-forward design. Even before ZEN Master’s API set reached its current level of maturity, it was clear we could automate the full life cycle of each event. We needed to create, configure, monitor, and tear down live events entirely through automation. Zixi gave us the means to build that system.

The second factor was the flexibility on ingest and delivery. We work with hundreds of venues and a wide range of production tools, which means we see all types of ingest formats. Zixi’s support for RTMP, SRT and the Zixi protocol allowed us to create a consistent and reliable workflow regardless of how a venue originates its feed.

The third factor was the partnership itself. Live sports requires rapid response, so our NOC works closely with Zixi support through established Slack workflows. The speed of that collaboration has been essential, whether an issue is minor or significant. The pace of live events does not allow slow turnaround times, and Zixi has consistently met the urgency of our environment.

Our workflow starts at the venue—across college campuses, arenas and automated camera systems, we ingest signals using RTMP, SRT or the Zixi protocol. Zixi Broadcaster instances, i.e. a virtual server running in the provider’s data center that is deployed in our cloud environment, handle transcoding, packaging and feed into our multi-CDN workflow. ZEN Master provides orchestration, but we rely on the ZEN Master APIs to automate the process. We also have AI agents that monitor the games for QoS and automatically trigger responses based on the incoming signals.

Automated Fall Sports
A typical Saturday during the fall sports season demonstrates how this works. Our platform may be processing hundreds of simultaneous games. For each event, our automation activates Zixi Broadcasters, assigns them to specific games, applies the correct transcoding settings, configures redundancy and monitors stream health. If a Broadcaster instance shows issues such as packet loss or increased latency, our system uses telemetry from Zixi to automatically reassign the event to another instance. The process is automated and does not require repeated operator input.

This level of automation allows our team to manage tens of thousands of games per month. Whether we’re powering large, aggregated sports platforms spanning many leagues and thousands of games or a branded university athletic conference with dense schedules and high live-viewer concurrency, Zixi enables consistent quality across widely varied venues and customer segments.

By integrating Zixi solutions with VIP, we have helped our customers achieve strong results and bring broadcast-level experiences to audiences of all sizes.

More information is available at https://zixi.com/.

WALTHAM, Mass.—Video-over-IP software provider Zixi said Roi Sasson has joined the company as vice president, engineering.

In his new role, Sasson will lead the company’s global engineering organization with a focus on hyperscaling the technology teams, structuring processes and accelerating innovation to meet the market demand for IP video delivery, Zixi said.

“Roi Sasson brings exactly the experience and vision we need to lead Zixi through this next phase of growth,” Zixi CEO Marc Aldrich said. “As demand for IP-based live video delivery surges, his proven ability to build world-class engineering teams and drive technology excellence will enable us to scale rapidly while maintaining the reliability and innovation our customers expect.”

Sasson has more than 20 years of experience in building and scaling distributed engineering organizations focused on real-time vide, cloud platforms and secure networking, Zixi said. He most recently worked at Invisinet, where as VP of software engineering, he led development of zero-trust network security solutions.

Before that, he was Kaltura’s VP of video platform, where he contributed to the launch of large-scale interactive video services. He also spent 13 years in senior leadership roles at Vidyo, including chief technology officer and senior VP of engineering. At Vidyo, he coauthored 10 U.S. patents and scaled the engineering organization from early-stage growth into a global team that has developed widely adopted technology.

“Roi is joining Zixi at a pivotal moment,” Zixi Chief Technology Officer Uri Avni said. “As demand for IP-based media workflows accelerates, his track record of building high-performance engineering teams and bringing breakthrough technology to market will be instrumental in scaling our capabilities globally and delivering new levels of reliability and agility to our customers.”

Said Sasson: “I am thrilled to join Zixi. The company’s technology already powers the most mission-critical live video workflows in the world. I look forward to building on that foundation, scaling our engineering organization and driving the next generation of IP delivery innovation so that our customers can move faster and respond to emerging market opportunities.”

WALTHAM, Mass.—Greg Cox has joined Zixi, a provider of broadcast-quality IP video delivery solutions, as sales director, West Coast.

Cox will be tasked with spearheading Zixi’s sales initiatives across the western United States, with a focus on deepening relationships with broadcasters, sports leagues, streaming platforms and enterprise clients, the company said. He’ll be responsible for expanding Zixi’s footprint among Tier 1 broadcasters and streaming services, accelerating adoption of its cloud-native delivery platform, building strategic partnerships with systems integrators and technology vendors and supporting complex media workflow transformations for enterprise clients, Zixi said.

“Greg’s appointment represents a significant step forward in our North American growth strategy,” Zixi CEO Marc Aldrich said. “His proven ability to translate complex technical capabilities into clear business value aligns perfectly with our mission to deliver innovation, reliability, and scalable media workflows. As we continue building on our innovations and expanding our industry leadership, Greg's expertise will be instrumental in growing our client partnerships and delivering measurable results at scale.”

Most recently vice president, sales and business development at TMT Insights, Cox brings more than 20 years of experience in media and entertainment technology, Zixi said. He has served in leadership roles with major solutions providers and service organizations, successfully leading crossfunctional teams through complex technology transformations, guiding enterprise clients through mission-critical workflow migrations, delivering multimillion-dollar revenue growth in competitive markets and building lasting partnerships that drive long-term business value, according to the company.

“I’m thrilled to join Zixi at such a pivotal moment in the industry's evolution,” Cox said. “The shift toward IP-based video delivery is accelerating, and Zixi’s reputation for pushing boundaries in live video reliability and performance is unmatched. I look forward to partnering with clients and industry leaders to unlock new efficiencies and opportunities that drive real business transformation in media operations.”

WALTHAM, Mass.—Zixi, a provider of video-delivery-over-IP technology, has named Sue Mitchell as director of account management, EMEA.

Mitchell will be tasked with supporting the company’s growth across the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, working closely with customers to strengthen relationships and expand Zixi’s presence there, the company said.

A 25-year broadcast media technology veteran, Mitchell worked most recently at Synchronized, where she drove artificial intelligence software-as-a-service (SaaS) adoption for major broadcasters and streamers. She has also held senior posts at Deluxe, Technicolor and Prime Focus.

“I’m genuinely excited to join Zixi,” Mitchell said. “It’s a privilege to work with an Emmy Award-winning team actively shaping the future of live streaming technology, under the leadership of Marc Aldrich. My goal is to develop lasting partnerships with our clients, enabling them to benefit from Zixi’s reliability, innovation and scalability in our fast-moving industry.”

Said Aldrich, Zixi’s CEO: “Sue brings the perfect mix of industry knowledge, commercial acumen and positive energy. She understands the challenges our customers face and has a proven track record of customer advocacy and delivering results. We’re delighted to have her on board.”

Zixi last month relaunched its Global Partner Program, which it describes as a strategic initative to strengthen technical integrations and accelerate go-to-market efforts across the media supply chain. Led by Vice President of Channel Sales and Partnerships Jonathan Low, the program features certification tracks, co-development resources and coordinated marketing support, Zixi said.

Zixi also struck a deal with French media distribution platform OKAST to power scalable free, ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channel delivery to more than 80 platforms worldwide, the company said.

WALTHAM, Mass., and Paris—French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable reliable, scalable live channel delivery to more than 80 platforms worldwide.

The collaboration is part of Zixi’s newly launched Global Partner Program, which is designed to accelerate global partnerships and support media organizations deploying live video workflows.

OKAST powers more than 180 Free Ad-Supported Television (FAST) and linear channels across Europe and Latin America. As global demand for premium streaming content grows, OKAST sought to upgrade its delivery infrastructure to support international expansion and improve the quality of service. With the integration of Zixi’s SDVP and ZEN Master control plane, OKAST has improved operational reliability, visibility and cost-efficiency, Zixi said.

“We were reaching the limits of what our previous setup could support,” said OKAST CEO and co-founder Cedric Monnier. “Zixi gives us control, visibility and the ability to scale. It’s a foundational part of our infrastructure moving forward.”

The move also supports OKAST’s work to drive innovation as part of the ASAP4EU consortium, a European Commission–funded initiative accelerating next-generation streaming and monetization workflows.

Prior to adopting Zixi, OKAST faced increasing challenges with latency, blackouts and support overhead as its channel count and geographical footprint grew, Zixi said.

With Zixi, it can now deliver high-quality live streams to any partner from broadcasters in Europe to OTT platforms in Latin America without re-architecting its delivery model.

Additionally, OKAST’s engineering team is leveraging Zixi’s ZEN Master for centralized, real-time monitoring and orchestration across the company’s entire channel portfolio. The platform’s advanced alerting and diagnostics capabilities have replaced manual workarounds, significantly reducing support ticket volume.

OKAST has also seen a measurable return on investment. The previous cloud-based infrastructure quickly became cost-prohibitive at scale, whereas Zixi’s solution offers improved performance with lower operational costs.

“Our previous stack worked for a handful of channels, but not for 100-plus,” said Monnier. “Zixi provides better reliability at a lower cost. It enables us to grow sustainably.”

Zixi has also expanded its global ecosystem through the Zixi Enabled Network Partner Program. The initiative offers partners access to advanced enablement resources, joint marketing opportunities, and integrated support services.

More information is available on the Zixi and OKAST websites.

WALTHAM, Mass.—At the 2025 IBC Show, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Zixi will demonstrate innovations that help content owners, broadcasters, sports leagues, service providers, and OTT platforms deliver live video with greater quality, security, flexibility, and cost efficiency.

Zixi will showcase solutions that address key challenges in live video workflows across three critical areas:

• Contribute – Automating content acquisition, switching, and contribution.
• Process – Normalizing and regionalizing content for any audience.
• Deliver – Ensuring reliable IP distribution over satellite, fibre, and the internet at a lower cost.

The Zixi Platform supports a wide range of needs, including blackout restrictions, regionalized content delivery, multiple protocols, and diverse internet connectivity. By simplifying workflows and removing interoperability barriers, Zixi enables businesses to scale live video while reducing costs, the company said.

New Capabilities at IBC 2025
Zixi will unveil several innovations designed to expand interoperability and streamline live video workflows:

• Zero Latency Frame Thinning for smooth streaming over congested networks.
• Mobile application turning smartphones into Zixi-enabled cameras and encoders.
• Modernized UI for Zixi Broadcaster.
• ESNI (Event Scheduling Notification Interface) integration for precise switching using SCTE 224.
• TAMS (Time Addressable Media Store) integration for rapid turnaround workflows, compliance, archiving, and collaboration.
• SPTS (Single Program Transport Stream) Re-Multiplexing for regionalised delivery.

Partner Ecosystem & Podcast Studio
Zixi will highlight its rebranded partner ecosystem, built on interoperability and co-innovation, with partners including:

• Uplynk – Delivering IP-based streaming workflows that replace satellite and fibre with scalable, personalized distribution.
• Osprey Video – Offering professional-grade encoders and decoders that integrate with Zixi for reliable, low-latency IP video transport.
• Videon – Providing edge computing capabilities through the LiveEdge Platform, optimised for REMI production, graphics, and advertising, seamlessly integrated with Zixi orchestration.
• Zixi will also host a live meet-me room, allowing customers and partners to exchange content and showcase hands-on interoperability across IBC demos.

IBC Accelerator Programme
Zixi is participating as a vendor in the “Master Control Room in the Cloud” project, led by the BBC and RTE. This initiative explores orchestrating live event control across multiple vendors and clouds, including advanced stream handling such as audio track shuffling, standards conversion, and deep essence inspection.

Speaking Sessions include "The Future of Media Streaming: Ecosystems, AI and the New Content Economy" in Hall 4 on Friday, Sept. 12 and "Next Gen Streaming Infrastructure: How the Cloud is Coming of Age," Saturday, Sept. 13 in Hall 5. For more information on these events, visit https://show.ibc.org/content-everywhere-feature.

Zixi will be in Stand 5.A85.

LONDON, UK—The BBC World Service is working with Encompass Digital Media and Zixi to transition the global distribution of its content from satellite to IP-based delivery, offering “unparalleled flexibility, scalability and cost-effectiveness,” according to Encompass.

The first major milestone was reached at the end of March, and delivered the full transition to IP distribution for BBC World Service partners across Europe with the Americas, Pacific, Africa, and Asia to follow.

The BBC World Service allows the British broadcaster to reach a potential worldwide audience of 450 million, delivering news and current affairs in 42 language services including English across a mix of video, audio and online output.

The BBC World Service is using Encompass’ Altitude Connect platform, integrating Zixi’s IP delivery technology with Altitude Media Cloud, Encompass’ global broadcast cloud platform.

Encompass says its strategy towards emphasizing the modernization of broadcast infrastructure, audience resilience, and cost-effective content distribution is "a natural fit" for the BBC’s own distribution roadmap. By moving to IP-based delivery, Encompass expects the BBC World Service will:

• Expand accessibility by delivering content more efficiently across a range of digital and broadcast platforms.
• Enhance flexibility and security, ensuring uninterrupted service in regions where satellite coverage may be unreliable or cost-prohibitive.
• Support sustainability and cost reduction, moving away from legacy satellite technology to a more scalable and adaptable digital framework.
• The shift to IP also enables targeted content delivery, allowing the BBC to respond more effectively to market challenges and changing audience needs.

In migrating hundreds of radio and TV partners globally from satellite to IP delivery, the project aims to transition The BBC World Service from bespoke receiver hardware to commodity, software-based solutions. The BBC World Service is using SCTE 224 to integrate broadcast schedules, delivering precise and seamless channel switching across the global platform, Encompass said.

Nigel Fry, Director Distribution, International Services, BBC News, said: "Transitioning BBC World Service distribution to IP represents a major milestone in our commitment to modernizing how we serve markets worldwide. This shift provides another level of flexibility for our services while aligning with our long-term strategy to adapt to the evolving media landscape. With the support of Encompass and Zixi, we are ensuring that BBC World Service continues to deliver trusted news and information to audiences, wherever they are, with greater reach and security than ever before."

Marc Bruce, CEO of Encompass Digital Media, said: “We are proud to partner with the BBC and Zixi to bring a new era of IP-based content distribution to BBC World Service. This project is a significant step forward in modernizing broadcast infrastructure, allowing for greater flexibility, cost efficiency, and enhanced security. By moving away from satellite, we are enabling the BBC to reach its global audience with unmatched flexibility and precision."

Marc Aldrich, CEO of Zixi, added: "Zixi is thrilled to collaborate with the BBC and Encompass to deliver this groundbreaking transition to IP-based distribution. Our technology ensures the highest level of reliability, security, and scalability, allowing the BBC World Service to expand its reach and maintain its reputation for excellence in global broadcasting. This project is a testament to the future of content delivery, where IP distribution becomes the gold standard for efficiency and innovation."

WALTHAM, Mass.—Zixi will be at the 2025 NAB Show, April 6-9 in Las Vegas, showcasing “innovations for live video delivery with unmatched quality, reliability, and security at a lowest Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).”

“Our customers’ content is the highest value asset of their business, which needs to be delivered live with unmatched quality, reliability, and security at the lowest total cost,” said Marc Aldrich, CEO of Zixi. “Zixi’s solutions empower our customers to meet these challenges and accelerate their business transformation with IP video technologies at unmatched scale.”

Demonstrations will cover customer use cases and outcomes across four live video solution areas:

• Content Contribution: Increase revenue by enabling more events and deliver high-quality live content in 4K and HDR reliably at scale at a lower cost than satellite or fiber.
• Satellite Replacement: Enable higher quality video over IP with increased flexibility and agility to hundreds of affiliates at a lower cost.
• B2B Distribution: Monetize content while predictably supporting audience expectations through cloud based ingest, localization, and distribution for local and affiliate networks.
• D2C Distribution Enablement: Normalize and distribute transport streams for OTT and FAST from varied sources consistently at scale.

Zixi will also host tech demos with partners in its booth, including Magnifi.ai, who will demonstrate automated highlight clipping for sports and news content, leveraging metadata analysis, AI-driven tagging, and real-time automation. This enables enhanced discoverability, localization, and socially optimized content, ensuring high-speed, cost-efficient, and scalable content delivery across platforms—driving engagement and audience reach like never before.

Showfer Media will debut with Zixi a sophisticated advertising platform crafted to simplify advertising across any ecosystem, seamlessly integrating with diverse content supporting use cases such as Localization, Station Distribution, and Satellite Augmentation.

Singular.live will demonstrate its integration with Zixi, showcasing how it delivers broadcast-quality graphic overlays with ultra-low latency to support use cases such as Live Event Contribution and Localization. Singular customers can replace expensive, legacy graphics systems with Singular's modern, HTML5-based approach.

Videon will showcase the native Zixi integration within the LiveEdge Platform, a robust video edge computing device optimized for REMI Production, Real Time Live Streaming, Graphics, and Advertising. Supporting use cases such as Live Event Contribution and Normalization, this integration combines low-latency and cost-efficiency with support for Zixi’s control plane, providing unified orchestration, management, and control capabilities.

At the NAB Show Streaming Summit on Monday, April 7 at 1:30pm, Sinclair’s CTO Mike Kralec will sit down with Zixi’s CEO Marc Aldrich to discuss Sinclar’s use of Zixi’s technology.

Mike Kralec, SVP and Chief Technology Officer, Sinclair, said: "Zixi has been a solid partner for us as we've transformed our broadcasting operations to the cloud. Their flexible and reliable solutions have given us the stability we need to manage our diverse nationwide network, while also opening up new opportunities to integrate with our distribution partners. The trust in Zixi's technology has been invaluable as we continue to modernize our workflows and infrastructure."

Zixi will be in Booth W1929 in the West Hall of the LVCC.

BURBANK, Calif.—Estrella Media operates under the umbrella of MediaCo and centers itself around content that connects with Hispanic communities, serving as a cultural and information bridge and reaching audiences across various broadcast and digital platforms. We are known for our diverse programming of news, entertainment, sports, reality shows and music content designed for our predominantly Hispanic audience and take pride in being one of the largest producers of Spanish-language original video and audio content in the United States, a lot of which is produced in our studios here in Burbank.

Our content is available nationwide, whether it’s through our O&O stations or our affiliate stations and partnerships with other broadcasters, and cable and satellite providers.

As part of our overall strategy for delivering high-quality broadcasting, we needed to enhance cost efficiency and operational flexibility. I was tasked with spearheading the search for transitioning our satellite broadcast delivery to an IP-based workflow. That’s when I discovered Zixi, and after finding out that it could leverage our existing hardware infrastructure and that of our affiliates and broadcast partners, it was immediately clear that they were the right choice for our operations.

Simplified Delivery
Within 60 days, we migrated from satellite to IP for our programming distribution, and within 90 days, we had fully transitioned across all our affiliates and owned-and-operated stations.

Our affiliates experienced minimal disruption as Zixi integrated with their existing operations so they could maintain continuity while benefiting from IP-based advantages. The integration of Zixi with Harmonic IRDs (Integrated Receiver Decoders—8130/8140 models) is ideal because it simplifies the workflow with minimal reconfiguration and no additional middleware.

The transition was simple as we could leverage existing IRDs around the country, and with a straightforward software update and internet connection, IRDs could receive our signals through Zixi, allowing us to deliver to over 100 locations.

Uninterrupted signal delivery is critical for maintaining the high quality of broadcasts. We operate a network connecting our Los Angeles and Dallas broadcast operating centers, and Zixi’s inter-cluster capabilities and failover capabilities automatically switch to backup streams or alternative paths to ensure broadcasts stay online even in the case of network disruptions, dual server or circuit failures.

In addition to our two broadcast centers, we’re using Zixi’s ZaaS (Zixi as a Service) to deliver live and linear content to certain target affiliates, including MVPDs and MSOs, without requiring extensive on-premises infrastructure.

The shift away from relying on satellite delivery and distribution has provided significant savings. For example, live soccer games originating in Mexico now incur negligible additional costs, with our IP delivery infrastructure paying for itself within just a few games.

We’ve been using the Zixi platform for about two years now, and the ease of maintenance means we experience minimal operational disruptions—in fact, simple code updates are completed in seconds. In addition, satellite distribution includes significant recurring expenses for leases and maintenance and transitioning to IP has eliminated these costs, fully covering our investment in the new system.

Zen Master
One of my favorite tools is Zixi’s Zen Master, which gives us centralized access to all enabled devices across our locations. It’s comprehensive, giving us deep visibility into performance metrics for every stream and every endpoint on the network. I like to think of it as a holistic health view of our operations, one that helps us proactively manage our delivery network and quickly analyze and address any issues. It’s the glue that holds everything together.

Zixi’s expertise and guidance throughout have been nothing but professional and responsive. Our cost, operational, and technical benefits have been transformative and have modernized our content distribution. Zixi’s technology and team has really set the standard for what IP video transport can achieve. ●

Chris Buchanan is vice president of engineering at Estrella Media, where he leads the technical operations behind the company’s broadcast activities. He can be reached at chrisb@estrellamedia.com.

WALTHAM, Mass.—Zixi, a provider of IP-based high value live video transport and observability software, today announced the appointment of Marc Aldrich as Chief Executive Officer, effective Oct. 1. Aldrich succeeds CEO Gordon Brooks, who has led Zixi for more than seven years and will remain actively involved in the business as Executive Chairman. Zixi is backed by Boston-based software private equity firm Clearhaven Partners.

Prior to Zixi, Aldrich was CEO of ThinkAnalytics, and previously served as General Manager of the Media & Entertainment Industry Business Unit within Amazon Web Services where he built and led the development of AWS’ M&E Industry business for five years. Prior to AWS, Aldrich led the Americas sales region for Cisco’s Global Service Provider Segment. In this role, he was responsible for Cisco’s service provider strategy and business relationships for Cable, Telco, and Media customers as well as related channel partnerships and go-to-market segments. In addition to his direct role, Aldrich held global responsibility for Cisco’s Service Provider video architecture, strategy, and global go-to-market. Aldrich has built a strong reputation in the industry for customer-centricity and business transformation.

“Zixi has already built a reputation for innovation and reliability supporting high value media workflows across our industry,” said Gordon Brooks. I worked closely with Marc for 5 years while he was at AWS and experienced his integrity and broad industry knowledge firsthand. “Marc’s experience is exactly what we sought to propel the business into next-level growth. I look forward to my close collaboration with Marc and continued partnership with the Clearhaven Partners team.”

“I’m delighted to welcome Marc to Zixi as CEO,” remarked Michelle Noon, Founder and Managing Partner of Clearhaven Partners. “His experience scaling media technology businesses is a perfect fit for Zixi at its current growth inflection point. I’m equally excited to continue to work with Gordon Brooks in his capacity as Executive Chairman. Over nearly the past decade, Gordon has been instrumental in Zixi’s innovation and growth across broadcast, enterprise, OTT and other market segments and the Company will continue to benefit from his insights and perspective.”

“It’s an honor to join Zixi as CEO,” said Marc Aldrich. “I’ve known and admired Zixi for many years, notably in my prior role at AWS. Zixi’s differentiated software has widespread applicability for reliable, cost-efficient software supporting media transport workflows and orchestration of high value content. There’s enormous, continued potential for Zixi in its next phase as we expand market presence and drive adoption to support our customers’ business objectives. I look forward to working with Clearhaven Partners and Gordon as we embark on this next chapter.”

Missed any of our recent product news? Here is TV Tech's weekly wrap-up of new products, services and deployments we published in our newsletter between August 19 to August 23. The stories are listed from the newest on Friday August 23, day by day back to our stories from Monday August 19.

Dish Business Launches News Evolve M2 Set Top Box for Hotels

Evolve M2 allows hoteliers, senior living facilities and others to update internal systems and tailor settings and apps available to guests on each property.

Nugen Audio to Celebrate 20th Anniversary at IBC 2024

From the outset, Nugen Audio has been fully focused on providing solutions to real-life problems and will be highlighting new solutions during the show.

PilotDesk and LG Ad Solutions Ink New Long-Term Ad Tech Deal

As part of the agreement, YieldPilot will optimize and streamline ad inventory with automated yield optimization for publishers.

Three Reasons Why Brazil’s TV 3.0 Decision Matters Here

What does the accomplishment mean to U.S. broadcasters grappling with the myriad of challenges the voluntary transition to 3.0 has created?

Multiple Trends Driving Dynamic KVM Market for M&E

With the industry’s move to IP, lower latency, more flexibility in the offing.

Revolutionizing Broadcast Production Models With Dante

Access to Dante in the cloud allows broadcasters to rethink how they approach audio production.

Evertz to Focus on Software Defined Video Networking at IBC 2024

Company’s SDVN solution targets media companies moving to IP or expanding all-IP infrastructures using SMPTE ST 2110 and NMOS.

Yospace To Showcase Dynamic Ad Insertion Developments At IBC 2024

The company’s technology powered delivery of 10 billion ads on four continents this summer.

SDVI to Feature Latest Rally Access Workstation Developments at IBC 2024

Rally enables anywhere, anytime access to hosted edit workstations and content in the cloud.

Actus Digital To Highlight Compliance, Monitoring Product Developments At IBC 2024

The company will showcase its technology and mark its 20th anniversary at the show.

Sony Electronics Unveils 4K Handheld Professional Camcorders with AI-Based Tools

The camcorders offer AI-based subject recognition autofocus, tracking, and auto framing.

RCN Colombia Leverages Zixi To Streamline Content Distribution To U.S. Affiliates

The Latin American broadcaster is using Zixi’s IP solution portfolio in place of satellite.

NAB Studio Deploys Unytalk Live Interactive Webcast Solution

The studio is using the solution to produce and broadcast interactive content.

You Can Now Smell Your TV Programs for Just $180

Elevated Perceptions has launched “MovieScent,” an AI-powered device that the company says releases real-time scents based on events and environments within movies, TV shows, televised sporting events and streams.

Chyron To Feature Latest Enhancements for PRIME, PAINT and LIVE At IBC 2024

The company will show a new Chyron PRIME playout workflow that simplifies operation.

Mo-Sys To Feature MoViewer Multi-Camera Virtual Production Preview Solution At IBC 2024

MoViewer eliminates the need for per-camera render nodes.

WALTHAM, Mass.—Latin American news, sports and entertainment network RCN Colombia has deployed Zixi to distribute premium content to affiliates across the United States.

The broadcaster has seen a significant surge in demand from the United States as interest in Spanish-language content grows. RCN's mission is to inform, entertain and connect viewers with content that reflects the culture and values of Latin America, Zixi said.

Integrating Zixi into its operations has enabled RCN to streamline content distribution, eliminating the need for traditional satellite and fiber infrastructure. Using Zixi-as-a-Service (ZaaS), RCN has transitioned to a cost-effective cloud infrastructure while maintaining the reliability traditionally associated with satellite delivery, it said.

Zixi Broadcaster serves as the bridge for content from on-premises sources to the cloud. Within the cloud environment, the Zixi Software-Defined Video Platform (SDVP) processes and distributes content to affiliates, all managed by ZEN Master, the cloud control plane that ensures operational efficiency and end-to-end visibility, it said.

With the shift to IP distribution enabled by Zixi's SDVP, the new system not only accelerates the onboarding of new affiliates but also improves operational agility and reduces costs. By replacing satellite farms with streamlined on-premises servers and leveraging the Zixi Enabled Network, RCN can deliver its content to new markets and explore additional revenue streams without significant upfront infrastructure costs, it said.

"The United States is seeing a significant rise in demand for high-quality Latin American programming, and RCN Colombia, with its outstanding lineup, is well-positioned to meet that demand. However, traditional satellite workflows were not sufficient to scale distribution efficiently," said Omar Silva, Telecoms Director at RCN. "Zixi provides the flexibility and scalability RCN needs while keeping costs low and simplifying the process with its comprehensive solution."

Zixi will exhibit at IBC 2024, Sept. 13-16, at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center.

See Zixi at IBC 2024 Stand 5.A85.

To schedule a meeting at IBC 2024, visit the company’s website.

In recent years, as TV companies and producers pushed to launch streaming services and deploy IP infrastructures, Zixi has been at the center of that tectonic tech change, offering end-to-end software solutions to more than 1,400 customers as well as providing 400 plus integrated partner offerings that enable reliable broadcast-quality video delivery over IP networks.

Founded in 2006, Zixi’s growth has been backed since 2011 by Schooner Capital, who helped it capitalize on a growing demand for streaming and IP technologies and expand its client list to include Amazon Prime Video, AWS Elemental Media Connect, Fox, Fubo, MLB, Net Insight, NHL, Paramount, Roku, SKY, Univision, Wurl, YouTube TV and hundreds of other media and entertainment organizations globally. 

In June the company reached another important milestone in its development with the private equity group Clearhaven Partners, acquiring Zixi. As part of the deal, Zixi’s executive leadership team, which has remained in place, joined Clearhaven and also became investors.

In this Q&A, TV Tech spoke with John Wastcoat, senior vice president of strategic alliances and marketing at Zixi about the Clearhaven deal, the company’s new strategies and their view of the broadcast, streaming and media landscape.  

(The following is an edited transcript.)

TV Tech: Let’s start off with Clearhaven’s investment in Zixi. What does that mean in general terms for the company’s future and its plans?

John Wastcoat: Probably the best place to start is with why we did a transaction now. 

The answer to that is our existing investors have been with us for a really long time and helped us grow into the world leader that we are. It's a fund called Schooner Capital that was run by Vin Ryan, who was a major investor, CEO of Iron Mountain. What he did with the Fund for many years was use his stock from Iron Mountain to fund transactions.  

But about two years ago, the Iron Mountain stock ran out. So they started to think about what other businesses in their portfolio were ready for a transaction and [at Zixi] we started to target doing a deal so that they could start investing in some other businesses. 

Schooner Capital was really great. But we've now got a different partner in Clearhaven Partners. They have made a significant investment to take managing control of Zixi, along with the Zixi management team who co-invested with them. 

Clearhaven is a firm with a great deal of experience and expertise in scaling software organizations. They already have some positions in other companies in the entertainment industry, like Wowza and SundaySky. So they really get it. 

With them, we're going to be able to better serve our customer base and possibly look at some complementary acquisitions that will accelerate our growth.

TVT: Does their investment mark any shifts in your corporate strategies or your market focus in the future?

JW: It's not going to be a change in strategy. It will really be a matter of better executing. We can grow the engineering group to be able to innovate and possibly bring on some complementary technologies as some tuck-in investments. 

They're going to help us grow, and they've also got a broad network of resources from their portfolio companies. We can all help each other share best practices. So, it's going to be about executing at higher velocity going forward. 

Zixi will still be looking to continue to do a lot of business with legacy broadcasters that are moving from satellite to in the cloud. We do a lot with digital-first OTT providers—Google and Apple+ and Amazon Prime video—and with sports leagues, MLB, NHL. We want to grow those relationships, find similar ones in other geographies and continue to take advantage of our markets, which are growing by 30% a year according to an independent study we did. 

TVT: Are you looking at closer ties with the companies in their portfolio in terms of integrating technologies?

JW: In terms of our sister companies, they're going to remain sister companies. Early on, Clearhaven decided that they weren't going to merge us together because we have different customer bases and different technology stacks. But we are looking at technologies that they have that could help us move more quickly and to innovate that might be beneficial to us. We're just a few weeks into this, so we're, we're just starting to explore those relationships.

TVT: Earlier this year, you reported some revenue and operations figures, with recurring revenue from the OTT growing 100% year-over-year while broadcaster customers grew 30% and Zixi’s SDVP was involved in broadcasting over 1.5 million live sporting events. So let's talk a little bit about each of those areas. In the streaming, OTT sector, there's certainly a lot of challenges facing some of the players in that, in terms of trying to attain profitability and reduce costs. Churn levels are really high. The ad market is seeing good growth but there are lot of players fighting for those ad dollars. How do you see that landscape these days and what are you doing to help your clients address some of the trends?

JW: It's going to be a high growth area for us. They do have challenges, but we do help them in a number of ways, including, to better monetize their content. They're looking at more ways to do that with ad tech, and we've got a lot of integrations into our software that help them there. 

We also provide the lowest total cost of ownership. Using Zixi actually drives down their costs because of lower need for compute or egress [resources]. Then they're able to use those savings in different parts of the business, like acquiring new content. 

And that's happening a lot with the OTT platforms. You see people acquiring rights for sporting events, primarily rights the legacy broadcasters had. They are using those rights to drive new sources of income for them, and that only helps us. At the same time, it means we’re helping them reduce costs. We're helping them with new features and functionality in our software to make that content more easily consumed. So we're good partners to them. We drive down costs as they battle for eyeballs.

TVT: How do you see the broadcast market and where we are with the transition from satellite IP video?

JW: It's happening slower than we would have thought or we would like, but it's still happening. Most legacy broadcasters are switching to IP, and they are developing and rolling out their own streaming services for the content. But it's slower than we would want and it's probably slower than they would want, because there is a cost saving to it. 

So, it is an industry that has been slower to change but that's going to continue to grow. I think over the next couple of months going into IBC, you're going to see some announcements from us about some new and bigger customers that are finally taking a bigger bite out of that transition. 

TVT: Why do you think that's gone a little slower than expected? 

JW: Well, I think it goes back to fundamentally the fact that if you are a broadcast engineer, you get fired when there's a black screen. What they have has worked, even if it's more expensive or not as modern or as flexible. So, they’ve been slower to adopt change. But the economics of it are forcing their hand, and the synergies with the streaming offerings are making those changes mandatory. It's accelerating, and we're glad for it.

TVT: As you mentioned a lot of sports rights are streaming right into streaming. How do you see that trend developing? 

JW: The streamers are making active moves to get those content rights, whether it's, you know, the NFL, or the NBA rights are up right now. It's highly competitive because sports is the one thing that you know people are going to watch. That’s why these guys are all focusing on it. 

Netflix, for a long time, didn't want to get into the live business because they needed properties that could be applicable worldwide, but now, they're accelerating their investment and offerings. And Amazon just keeps being aggressive in trying to get all of the stuff that they can, and being smart about driving subscriber growth. Everybody's decided that it's a streaming world and the sports leagues are maximizing that right now. They're making good money repackaging those rights with more competitors that are fighting for them.

TVT: Zixi has also been reporting significant growth in the Zixi enabled network ecosystem of partners. How do you see the future of that effort?

JW: It’s very important for us, because our customers are looking for complementary technologies to their Zixi network that they can plug in and that will work in the end-to-end workflow, whether it's, you know, cameras, encoders, decoders, QA systems, playout, cloud infrastructure. They don't want to have to waste a lot of time by testing each individual piece. A common customer will know that we’ve tested these products in the partner network and that when they plug it in, it's going to work. That improves time to market, and it means that they’re going to be in good shape with whatever they've got now or that they are using to future proof themselves. 

We are going to continue to emphasize that. We put a lot of effort into working with our partners. We've got dedicated resources to developing and maintaining our APIs to quickly solve problems. 

There is an engineering investment from our technology partners that they have to make so we try and make it as easy technically for them to do that. And we are sharing the documentation so that our joint customers can see what they're getting and know how it works very quickly.

TVT: Sustainability and the environmental impact of streaming has become a much bigger issue in recent years. How do you see the progress in that area and what are you doing to help? Obviously there has been progress but there is still a long way to go. 

JW: I think to be very blunt, organizations only care about sustainability, or can only care about sustainability when there's a cost savings associated with it. They're not going to pay extra to realize any gains. 

What Zixi does is severely reduce the amount of computing resources that people have to have. If there is less required, it saves all our partner companies actual dollars and the output into the world is less. So, they can claim a cost win, and they can claim a sustainability win. 

With each version of our software, we improve on that. We are drastically becoming more efficient with every version. And that is dramatically reducing the footprint that our customers have to have. 

We are doing a lot of other things like having an emphasis on remote training and not having to have people on planes. But you know, the real thing that people are taking advantage of is those dramatic efficiencies that are saving people money and improving their footprint. 

WALTHAM, Mass.—Zixi, a provider of the video delivery technology over IP announced today that it has been acquired by Boston-based software private equity firm Clearhaven Partners for an undisclosed amount.  

Founded in 2006, Zixi provides end-to-end software solutions to more than 1,400 customers and 400+ integrated partner offerings to enable reliable broadcast-quality video delivery over any IP network for broadcasters, enterprises, OTT video providers, sports leagues and franchises, service providers, cable operators and telcos worldwide. Zixi clients include Amazon Prime Video, AWS Elemental Media Connect, FOX, Fubo, MLB, Net Insight, NHL, Paramount, Roku, SKY, Univision, Wurl, YouTube TV and hundreds of additional leading media and entertainment organizations globally, the company said. 

Zixi’s cloud-based ZEN Master live video orchestration and telemetry control plane enables global monitoring of all live streaming activity across connected Zixi nodes, complex workflow automation and advanced video and stream analytics delivering actionable insights. The company says its Zixi Enabled Network “is the largest ecosystem of global third-party partner offerings empowering customers to seamlessly deliver over 20,000 live linear channels and millions of live events with rapid deployment speed and extreme scale in over 120 countries.”

Clearhaven Partners is a Boston-based private equity firm founded in 2019 to focus exclusively on enterprise and B2B software investments. The company said it “will work closely with Zixi to support the Company’s continued innovation, customer-focused culture and scalability on its way to achieving next era growth and success.”

Other video-focused companies in Clearhaven's portfolio include cloud provder Wowza and Sundaysky, a developer of video SaaS technology. 

“Partnering with Clearhaven, an investor group with a great deal of expertise scaling software companies and with a unique video thesis, is a natural fit for Zixi and one that will enable us to double down on product innovation, set the highest standards for serving our valued, worldwide customer base and ensure our business achieves next level scale and scalability,” said Gordon Brooks, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Chairman of Zixi. “As we enter our next stage of growth and innovation, we're delighted to partner with Clearhaven to pursue the significant opportunities in our market.”

No management changes have announced. 

TV TECH: What do you anticipate will be the most significant technology trends at the 2024 NAB Show?

GORDON BROOKS: Anticipated to be the most influential technology trend, AI and ML are set to make a substantial impact in the broadcast space in the upcoming years. However, a key concern for customers is the transition to the cloud for live video at scale. Similar to AI and ML, the trends of video over IP and cloud have evolved from experimental phases to widespread adoption and deployment. Zixi has played a pivotal role in assisting customers in the deployment of large-scale IP video delivery, securing an impressive market share of more than 80%.

TVT: What will be your most important product news?

BROOKS: The launch of our v17 SDVP software marks a significant milestone, featuring industry-first innovations that redefine standards. Dynamic Latency eliminates the need for static latency settings, ensuring a more adaptable and responsive system. High Performance Networking with DPDK enhances throughput performance, reducing compute costs and positively impacting our customers’ bottom line, a crucial consideration in challenging times.

The release also introduces HTML Overlays for Graphics, Smooth Live Midroll Insertion, Error Concealment and Timeline Normalization, enhancing the overall user experience. These advancements collectively make the transition to Live Video over IP at scale an obvious choice compared to other industry options.

Furthermore, we have achieved a major breakthrough in data analytics with our IDP platform analyzing more than 2.5 trillion telemetry data points, solidifying its leadership position. Leveraging AI and ML-powered algorithms and processing more than 9 billion daily data points, the platform can proactively identify and flag issues before they occur. The Multi-Object Correlation Analysis swiftly pinpoints the root cause of issues within minutes, a process that previously took days or weeks and incurred substantial costs for our customers.

TVT: How is your new product different from what’s available on the market?

BROOKS: The distinctive features introduced in this year's Zixi release set it apart in numerous ways. These advancements result from years of investment, expertise and insights gained from customer use cases. One standout feature is Dynamic Latency, exclusive to Zixi, enabling users to set a maximum latency and allowing the network to determine latency based on conditions. As conditions improve, the system gradually reduces latency without impacting downstream devices, significantly enhancing user experiences.

Zixi stands out by requiring only a fraction of the bandwidth and compute resources compared to competitors. Coupled with a skilled team of architects and deployment staff, Zixi makes the design and deployment of large-scale IP workflows remarkably straightforward, providing customers with a competitive edge in the streaming space.

TVT: What is it about NAB Show that brings you back every year?

BROOKS: NAB Show stands out as the most impactful convention, filled with continuous action from beginning to end. It provides a unique opportunity to connect with the majority, if not all, of our significant customers in a concise timeframe. This allows us to gather feedback, address concerns, stay abreast of industry trends, and engage in discussions that would be challenging to achieve in any other four-day period through alternative means. Additionally, we discover new customers and potential partners who take advantage of this opportunity to explore our offerings, often resulting in long-term collaborations spanning several years.

WALTHAM, Mass.—Zixi has announced that during the 2024 NAB Show it will be showing a number of new features for its live streaming offering at its booth W1401 between April 14 to 17. 

During the event, Zixi will present a diverse range of product updates and will be showcasing improved live video delivery performance, scalability and cost performance on the Zixi Enabled Network, the industry's largest ecosystem for live video over IP.

According to Zixi, those advances will help users adapt to the current streaming focus on cost cutting and profitability by enabling organizations to achieve more with fewer resources. 

“Zixi will demonstrate groundbreaking developments in efficiency that enable our customers to realize a very healthy bottom line,” said Gordon Brooks, executive chairman and CEO, Zixi. “There are a number of large savings areas, including egress and compute, as well as the use of advanced analytics and machine learning to drastically reduce RCA costs.”

These advances include:

• High-Performance Networking, leveraging DPDK to achieve remarkable throughput efficiency improvements while utilizing only a fraction of processing power.  This allows a Zixi Broadcaster to deliver 3x the amount of Zixi traffic versus previous versions and as a result the associated costs of compute is reduced by two-thirds.  Open-source alternatives require 3x the compute and therefore 9x the compute/costs versus Zixi using High Performance networking.
• Dynamic Latency for the optimization of live IP video based on real-time network conditions. High value streaming applications require as real-time, ultra-low latency as possible. Unique to Zixi, Dynamic Latency automatically finds the lowest possible latency based on network conditions, where streams can still be delivered reliably, and adjusts the latency as network conditions change.
• Error Concealment replaces video frames containing errors with skip frames while keeping audio in sync, overcoming situations where unrecoverable packet loss on input streams corrupts video frames. Error Concealment improves the downstream decoding and playback of video streams for customers deploying IRDs when there has been upstream packet loss creating some errors in the video stream content.
• Timeline Normalization repairs timelines in the transport stream introduced by upstream encoding and processing, helping sensitive to timeline issue IRDs, dramatically improving stream ingest. Timeline Normalization improves downstream decoding and playback of video streams for broadcasters when there has been upstream packet loss creating some errors in the video stream timelines or timelines are not clean due to the video ingested being legacy protocols.
• Required by Zixi’s broadcasters of 1M live events in 2023, Smooth Live Midroll Insertion makes it possible to insert an advertisement or a fixed length slate or blackout directly into the live stream output, making it simple for the customer to insert ads or promos in the cloud into a live event video stream when they do not need the full capabilities of, and inherent complexity of, production switching/editing or ad insertion software
• Dynamic HTML Overlays will be showcased, making the transition to the cloud seamless without the need for additional on-premises hardware for these processes. Dynamic HTML Overlays makes it easy for broadcasters to overlay graphics, such a scoreboards or news tickers, to a live video stream in the cloud when they do not need the full capabilities, cost or complexity of production switching and editing software.

The company also reported that it continues to innovate with AI, ML and advanced analytics and will demonstrate the ability to track telemetry metadata across the life of the live stream journey even as video leaves and comes back to the SDVP.  Coupled with Intelligent Data Platform (IDP) capabilities including Auto Incidents utilizing Multi-Object-Correlation-Analysis (MOCA), this not only strengthens Zixi’s ability to quickly perform root cause analysis (RCA) for the quick resolution of issues in minutes, but also to optimize workflows by replacing weak segments of the distribution with different networks or by replacing blind segments of the distribution with Zixi optimized delivery, the company reported. 

Also during the show, Zixi Enabled Network ecosystem partners will be demonstrating their Zixi integrated offerings in the Partner Village. These include:

• Ad Insertion Platform will demonstrate Zixi integrated ad insertion solutions for broadcast and OTT environments including the patented DAIConnect SSAI platform that allows content providers various methods to monetize live channels.
• Encompass will be exhibiting Altitude Media Connect that provides a cloud-native high-performance, flexible and scalable platform for channel aggregation, encoding, packaging content and playout for streaming and OTT platforms.
• Red5 will be demonstrating how users can utilize WebRTC and its real time streaming platform to deliver content to millions in milliseconds leveraging the reach of global Zixi Enabled Network along with support from Videon Labs.
• Singular.Live will be showcasing how it leverages Zixi to deliver broadcast quality graphic overlays with ultra-low latency. The platform’s advanced feature set presents an array of possibilities, enabling businesses to enhance engagement and explore monetization avenues, particularly through the implementation of localization and interactivity. 
• Videon Labs will be exhibiting the native Zixi integration in the Videon EdgeCaster EZ encoder, a powerful contribution edge encoding device designed for the point-of-production, delivering both low-latency and cost-efficiency with ZEN Master support for unified orchestration, management and control.

On Saturday April 13th, Zixi will sponsor and participate in the 2024 Devoncroft Executive Summit with many customers and partners discussing their experiences with the SDVP. 

On Sunday April 14th Zixi will present two thought leadership events, first in the Connect Zone Tech Chat Theater at 2PM, Senior Architect Ben Gaverick will present Managing Ultra Low Latency in Live IP Video Workflows, discussing necessities in delivering mission critical video content efficiently, especially in time-sensitive scenarios like sports broadcasting. At the Capitalize Zone Theater at 3PM, Zixi will host a panel with Zixi customers and partners, bringing together industry subject matter experts to discuss trends and challenges in cloud-based, live IP workflows.

For more details and to book a meeting please visit Zixi at NAB 2024. 

WALTHAM, Mass.—Zixi has announced a co-sell agreement with Verizon, coupling their network infrastructure with Zixi's live IP video software-defined solutions to deliver solutions for live linear and live event workflows across the media supply chain.

Zixi's SDVP is an innovative solution for provisioning, orchestrating and managing live video on 5G or any IP network. 

With the agreement, users can now deploy Zixi Broadcasters using Zixi ZEN Master and have access to comprehensive telemetry data on the network, transport, intra-cloud delivery, and associated edge devices in the end-to-end workflow. The powerful ZEN Master control plane enables users to help manage large-scale configurations to orchestrate, analyze, monitor, alert, and report on live video streams and devices across the Zixi Enabled Network of customers, integrated devices, and platforms and service providers standardized on Zixi. Powerful workflows include advanced GPU accelerated live transcoding, Zixi-patented sequenced hitless failover, connection bonding over disparate networks, purpose-built live operations dashboards, enhanced visualization, and centralized management of live channels and live events.

The partnership enables Verizon field sales to deliver to the customer base a software-defined solution set consisting of the Zixi Broadcaster, ZEN Master control plane and Zixi Live Transcoding, allowing Verizon to extend the edge of its network and allow M&E clients to scale at compute, transmission and operational levels, the companies said. 

The companies also reported that the partnership will help the M&E migration to IP and cloud-based workflows and away from satellite and other legacy methods while maintaining or exceeding broadcast levels of Quality of Service (QoS) and performance SLAs with lower latency. This becomes critical as the number of business partners involved in the media supply chain continues to grow exponentially, and content owners compete for audience share and drive new business models that innovate the programming lines of monetization while delivering a high Quality of Experience (QoE), the companies explained. 

Zixi’s software-defined solution, with its high efficiency, reduced infrastructure requirements, bandwidth optimization, and transport stream egress cost reduction, helps open new possibilities for the industry’s growth, innovation and enhanced video streaming experiences. 

“The breadth of Verizon network services and solutions coupled with the Zixi SDVP creates a winning combination of transport services, reliability and ease of use,” said Tim Stevens, global leader, strategic innovation, media & entertainment, Verizon. “By collaborating with a complex, next-generation provider like Zixi we are able to provide complex, next-generation solutions across the ecosystem enabling Verizon to deliver on our mission to help organizations improve performance and realize value faster.”

“Working closely with Verizon, we are bringing the industry an excellent 5G solution for live linear and event-based video use cases,” said Eric Bolten, vice president business development, Zixi. “The Verizon/Zixi solution set is a comprehensive Software-Defined Video Network fabric that coupled with Verizon’s world-class MEC network, allows media and entertainment customers a reliable and scalable offering across the media supply-chain as the live video market continues to rapidly evolve.”

The “television experience” has morphed into the more broadly defined “viewing experience,” extending to mobile and connected devices, new streaming services, and multiple screens. Accelerating these trends are a changing business landscape, IP and cloud workflows, and AI and data-driven analytics that will re-shape content creation. But whichever way it’s defined, created, or consumed, quality content will always be a social influencer, attracting an audience craving unique, customized, and engaging viewing experiences.

“High-profile live TV events still have the capacity to attract large audiences,” said Mike Ward, head of marketing at Singular.live. “At the same time, what we now know as television has changed drastically in terms of the platforms on which content is distributed and watched, giving audiences more options.”

“The shift from a linear, scheduled format to an on-demand, streaming model has allowed viewers to access content whenever they desire,” said Dan Brooks, head of marketing and pr at Mark Roberts Motion Control (MRMC). “Viewers can now enjoy content on their smartphones or social media platforms, broadening the scope of content consumption beyond traditional screens.”

“As the industry tries to figure out the appropriate models for streaming, viewers still want to be entertained,” said John Wastcoat, senior vice president, brand development, and marketing at Zixi. “Live events and live linear programming are now found on a diverse and confusing choice of OTT platforms, and the platforms themselves, which never relied on satellite delivery, are deploying IP workflows in the cloud.”

Wastcoat added that legacy broadcasters are moving to IP and the cloud to reduce operations costs, which allows them to create and acquire more content and monetize it in different ways.

As the industry continues to accept IP distribution and cloud alternatives while realizing savings of 50% to 90%, audiences will begin to see fewer glitches and better broadcast quality, according to Paul Calleja, CEO and CTO at GlobalM.

“The cloud is reshaping how TV is both produced and distributed, facilitating remote production, giving broadcasters and streamers the flexibility to navigate peaks in viewership, and enabling content providers to go direct-to-consumer,” said Sassan Pejhan, vice president of business development at Ateme.

GlobalM’s Calleja added that “companies will see more flexibility, from multiple different clouds to open protocols, to close deals with rights holders at the last possible minute. The future of television lies in the hands of organizations that understand that content distribution needs to change to software-defined video networks to meet the requirements of high-quality, low-latency, or file-based video delivery over the internet.”

Advancements in TV production technology have also helped level the content creation playing field.

“Behind the enabling technology, the biggest transformation has been who can originate content,” said Neil Maycock, chief commercial officer at Pebble. “What was exclusively the domain of large companies is now democratized for individuals.”

Technological advancements have democratized production by enabling smaller independent producers to create high-end 4K material, according to Brooks at MMRC. He added that the company’s range of broadcast and motion control solutions drives the advancement of content capture, from creating movement for PTZ camera enablement to automated camera positions for live sports and news broadcasts, full-scale motion control to achieve in-camera special effects, and virtual set integration.

Virtual studio technology has opened exciting new possibilities for driving higher-quality viewing experiences across all TV genres, according to Richard Wormwell, head of production Innovation at dock10. “Sports television has been revolutionized by virtual studios,” he said, “elevating commentary and stats to a new level of immersive engagement and enabling jaw-droppingly realistic scenes previously impossible for TV.”

New technologies are transforming viewers from passive spectators to active participants with endless possibilities for customization and personalization, according to Ateme’s Pejhan. “The convergence of video with social media, gaming, shoppable TV, betting, and immersive viewing experiences will see audiences engage with content in completely new ways,” Pejhan said.

Vinayak Shrivastav, CEO and co-founder at VideoVerse, said, “The emergence of OTT streaming apps has transformed media consumption, offering efficient content delivery and diverse pricing models. Seamless integration of internet-connected TVs and streaming devices grants users unparalleled control over their viewing choices. While live TV still remains relevant in some cases, viewers now demand uninterrupted streaming, rapid speeds, and a tailored viewing experience.”

Shifting the focus to business trends, Andy Shenkler, CEO and co-founder of TMT Insights, said, “We’ve seen a re-focus on cost controls, efficiencies, and stabilization to reduce footprints while still being able to provide scale and adoption of new consumer offerings to differentiate services amongst a crowded marketplace. We’ll see many companies shifting greater investment from outsourced vendors to insourcing all but the most commoditized sets of services to ensure service continuity.”

Shenkler forecasted an investment focus on technologies that further enable cost-efficiencies for high-touch services, such as AI and ML applications.

Manufacturers have an opportunity and responsibility to ensure television positively impacts future generations, according to Alun Fryer, technical marketing lead, hyperconverged solutions at Ross Video. “We are acutely aware of our responsibility to lead by example in using technology to steer us toward a more sustainable future. Our commitment involves developing environmentally conscious technologies and promoting sustainable practices in manufacturing, broadcasting, and video production.”

Television is increasingly being driven by data-enabled technologies, according to Kenny Miller, national director of sales at SuiteLife Systems.

“From a monitoring and control perspective, aggregating and managing data is critical to business integrity,” Miller said. “Monitoring and control technologies protect revenue streams by improving operational efficiency and reducing operational costs, while identifying performance trends and preempting technical problems by alerting engineers to potential problems that could lead to broadcast failures.”

He added that monitoring and controlling ecosystems can help broadcasters gain valuable insights into their operations.

Wormwell at dock10 believes “Technological advances in production are reinvigorating television content in ways that make people still want to watch. Made-for-TV content is still a focus in most households and remains as relevant today as it was 50 years ago."

Pebble’s Maycock continued, “In our race to enable more content on more devices, it’s important that we ensure television remains a force for good: informing, educating, and entertaining."

 Singular.live’s Ward summarized, “There is more that can be done to modernize the viewer experience, especially as more live production gets digitized using cloud-native or web tools that enable localization, personalization, and interactivity combined with data. We can’t wait to see what comes next."

WALTHAM, Mass.—Singular.live, a graphics platform that enables users to integrate live, customizable graphic overlays into their content, has integrated its capabilities with Zixi. 

“We are thrilled to have integrated Zixi to deliver broadcast quality graphic overlays with ultra-low latency," said Mike Ward, head of marketing at Singular. “With no downloads or dedicated graphics hardware required, our joint customers have the flexibility to scale with minimal cost.”

The web-based Singular.live platform eliminates the need for downloads, specialized hardware or intricate coding. Singular.live offers a versatile, comprehensive suite that caters to all essential requirements, encompassing the creative authoring environment through Composer, user-friendly control interfaces with Studio and uno as well as well-documented APIs and SDKs for developers to leverage, Zixi said.

With a flexible Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) pricing model and a cloud-native technology stack, Singular.live is constructed on top-notch cloud services, which ensures scalability and reliability. The platform’s features offer an array of possibilities, enabling businesses to enhance engagement and explore monetization avenues, particularly through the implementation of localization and interactivity, it said.

Some use cases include right owners looking to deliver content at scale through alternative additional feeds, localization and personalization. The platform also provides a disaster recovery solution with minimal infrastructure requirements, enabling a cost-effective and low footprint alternative to traditional solutions, it said.

With support for remote productions, it allows operators to work from any located, enabling those involved with digital-only productions to bring graphics to their work—a circumstance that makes using traditional galleries and resources cost prohibitive, it said.

A notable integration within the Singular ecosystem is its collaboration with Zixi, which empowers customers to incorporate Singular.live’s graphic overlays into their video content during the transportation and transcoding phase through the Zixi infrastructure, the company said.

Neither delays nor additional hardware investment are necessary. Zixi’s Live Transcoding platform offers a wide range of control and management options, including Web Interface, REST API or via the ZEN Master orchestration, management and monitoring control plane, it said.

ZEN Master makes it easy to manage inputs and outputs for hundreds of live video streams at scale, and with just a few clicks and automatic configuration details for network resources and distribution targets, users can create new live channels and spin up required streams on the fly, it said.

Zixi’s Live Transcoding and Video processing in IP ensures live events, such as sports broadcasts, news coverage and live entertainment, are delivered smoothly, securely and with minimal delay, it said.

More information is available on the Zixi and Singular.live websites.

For many companies in media & entertainment, sustainability is more than a word: It’s a mission for these manufacturers who are taking serious steps to become more sustainable and environmentally responsible in their business practices. Here are some views of how the industry is doing in attaining sustainability, from some of the people making it happen.

The Big Picture
The drive towards sustainability in television touches upon two key areas: The production and distribution of TV content via broadcasting, streaming, and other delivery systems. The other is the various consumer devices that access and display this content.

Let’s start with TV content production and distribution. Thanks to framework organizations such as WeAreAlbert, (an environmental organization aiming to encourage the television and film production industry to reduce waste and its carbon footprint), or consultancies like Mrs. GreenFilm, the industry is seeing more productions taking steps to promote and impose sustainable practices on set, according to François Polarczyk, sustainability director for Accedo. 

“Connecting directly to the grid, hiring local crew to avoid travel, and promoting the ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ loop in costumes and set buildings are the top criteria to me,” he said.

Polarczyk points to the Responsible Media Forum (RBF) as one of the leading organizations promoting sustainability in media, with members such as the BBC, Bauer Media Group, NBCUniversal, Sky, Virgin Media, and Warner Brothers Universal backing its efforts. The RBF’s sustainability initiatives include DIMPACT (an online tool for calculating the carbon emissions of digital content’s downstream value chain) and media sustainability conferences such as “Mirrors or Movers.”

“The streaming industry is responsible for 3–4% of global CO2 emissions,” he said. “DIMPACT is looking at providing a methodology to assess and reduce energy consumption of the media chain.”

“There are more and more initiatives that have started and aim to shine a light on being more responsible with the resources our planet offers,” agreed Chris Brähler, vice president of product for SDVI. “For example, the DPP [Digital Production Partnership] has been leading the way with their ‘Committed to Sustainability’ campaign, while other bodies like the NAB Show recently introduced sustainability-focused awards to increase visibility.”

V-Nova is a member of the Greening of Streaming group and the chair of its compression working group, which is working with Low Energy Sustainable Streaming (LESS) Accord recommendations to help streaming services reduce end-to-end energy consumption. 

In order to become more sustainable, the streaming industry should first focus on ways to reduce the utilization of existing systems, said Sam Orton-Jay, V-Nova’s vice president of product. 

“One possibility is rolling out better encoding technologies to reduce transcoding power requirements and the amount of data we deliver, to enable some reduction in required storage and delivery infrastructure over time” he said. “Secondly, a major part of the discussions so far on the LESS Accord has been the idea of a ‘Good enough’ quality of service that considers energy usage rather than simply prioritizing quality at all costs. Try to evaluate if you are delivering higher resolutions to certain devices than they really need. Finally, start asking key sustainability questions both of internal teams and external vendors alike. It is one of the most powerful tools we have at our disposal at this stage.”

From the Consumer Side
As for consumer products such as Smart TVs and other devices, and their impact on the environment as new models are purchased and older models that end up in landfills? 

“Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the impact of their purchasing decisions, and so are many manufacturers who are choosing to offer more sustainable goods, build out ESG (environment, social, and governance) strategies and report on their environmental efforts,” replied Patty Minichiello, global brand experience manager for TMT Insights. 

As well, “consumer brands are making strides in reducing packaging and plastics in their product and some offer buyback programs for old tech, such as Apple,“ SDVI’s Brähler added. “But a lot more can and has to be done in this area, with different countries looking at legislation to force behavior.”  

It's not just television production and distribution that needs to become more sustainable, but the influence that this industry exerts on society as a whole. 

For instance, “advertising and monetization from a wider perspective needs to be taken into account,” Polarczyk observed. “It is not only producing and delivering advertising that has a huge impact in terms of carbon emissions; the content of advertising also needs to be taken into account. For example, seeing an advert for New Zealand tourism if you’re based in London will have another impact, compared to seeing promotions around local farms to visit.”

Individual Efforts
Each of these companies have publicly committed themselves to pursuing sustainable business practices in the TV industry. Such sustainability commitments are prominently posted on their respective websites, and typically spelled out in very clear detail.

Case in point: “At Accedo, we recently launched our ‘Sustainable Marketplace’ to help vendors build their video applications leveraging sustainable vendors and products,” said Polarczyk. “It enables video service providers to make buying decisions based not only on product features, but also on sustainable KPIs (key performance indicators) to cover carbon emissions reduction, audience influence, and community impact. 

“We also released a new study, which looked at the energy usage of various streaming devices and a number of popular streaming applications. It uncovered some key areas of actions and guidelines to reduce energy usage of video devices.”

ATEME is another company that has taken a proactive approach. In 2021 it launched its  Green Delivery solution, an integrated end-to-end tool designed to allow OTT and DTH operators to reduce their video delivery carbon footprint. Green Delivery brings together carbon-efficient components to reduce hardware requirements, bandwidth usage and energy consumption. 

(Read: NAB Show Launches Excellence in Sustainability Awards)

SDVI’s sustainability efforts are largely centered around saving power, which means better utilization of the infrastructure used for content processing, according to Brähler.

“This can firstly be done by using the public cloud, as sharing compute and storage resources inherently means using less energy,” he said. “If I don’t process something on that machine, someone else is, and it‘s not just sitting there idle but still using energy. If I then optimize my supply chain and eliminate duplicate work and more efficiently use the resources at hand, I save even more energy. Lastly, choose a vendor that uses data centers and cloud providers that invest in green energy, so that even when I use less energy because even after I optimize my operations, the little energy I do use is created carbon free.”

V-Nova’s commitment to sustainability is inherent in their MPEG 5, Part 2 LCEVC (Low-Complexity Enhancement Video Coding) streaming solution, which the company says enhances the performance of existing codecs to reduce energy consumption during transcoding by up to 70%, while augmenting compression efficiency by up to 40%.

“It’s encouraging to hear how much the sustainability of video workflows is now on the agenda for our customers,” said Orton-Jay. “Even if not immediately so, they certainly engage when we bring up the significant savings that can be made in the energy consumption of their systems thanks to optimizations in their video compression technology. The fact that it often goes hand in hand with cost reduction tends to help too.”

This “doing more with less” approach is also being pursued by Zixi. ”We’re making our software cost-effective with 14x less CPU than other solutions in the market, 10x port efficiency, and virtual machine efficiency—requiring 50% less computing power,” said Gordon Brooks, CEO of Zixi. “All of these innovations combined save customers money, making our solutions highly sustainable and attractive in procurement.”

“In order to make meaningful progress towards sustainability, technology buyers need to make it mandatory, rather than a plus or an option—it needs to be a qualification of the procurement process,” he added. “And then, as a supplier it’s on us to do everything possible to be as sustainable as cost-effective to make it as attractive as possible.” l

WALTHAM, Mass.—Video encoding provider Videon is partnering with Zixi, a developer of live video over IP,  integrating Zixi’s tech platform into Videon’s LiveEdge, a powerful container-based edge compute ecosystem with sub-second glass-to-glass latency. A second integration enables LiveEdge to be managed by Zixi’s ZEN Master control plane, enabling users to manage large-scale configurations and orchestrate, analyze, monitor, and report on live video streams and devices across the Zixi Enabled Network of customers, integrated hardware and software applications, platforms and service providers standardized on Zixi.

Offering an alternative to traditional live video infrastructure, Zixi’s LiveEdge simplifies first-mile workflows by normalizing and synchronizing live video, audio, graphics, and data feeds, in real-time, enabling complex workflows and use cases including remote production kits, live betting, multi-camera time sync, video assistant referee, localized graphics, remote camera control, automated ad marker insertion and in-stadium second screen experiences, to name a few. 

Key features include the ingestion of live video, audio, graphics, and metadata, including proprietary and custom data formats, for normalization, synchronization, visualization, and security using native, third-party, or custom containers such as SMPTE-336 (KLV), SCTE-35, timestamp, DRM, watermarking, etc. 

Many of Zixi’s clients are using the company’s Software Defined Video Platform (SDVP) to deliver and manage thousands of streams to deliver low latency error-free transport over IP networks. For those media organizations contributing and delivering live video over unmanaged IP networks, Zixi says its protocol is a resilient congestion and network-aware protocol that adjusts to varying network conditions and employs patented, dynamic Forward Error Correction techniques for error-free video transport over IP. 

v17 of Zixi’s core software being released at IBC 2023 improves processing capacity requiring 95% less compute compared to other available options, as well as helps reduce transport stream egress cost by up to 50% allowing organizations to maximize their resources, minimize expenses and deliver broadcast-quality video content reliably with a profound impact on the TCO of live video streaming implementations. 

Zixi says the efficiency of its platform eliminates the need for excessive virtual machines, leading to reduced infrastructure requirements and substantial cost savings. By significantly cutting infrastructure costs, media organizations can allocate their resources more efficiently, redirecting budgetary allocations to other critical areas creating new business models and opportunities to generate revenue, the company said.

Videon utilizes key components of the SDVP to transport broadcast quality, ultra-low latency live video over any IP network. LiveEdge devices with the native Zixi integration include EdgeCaster EZ, EdgeCaster VCP, LiveEdge Node, the new LiveEdge Max, and across multiple form factors, including LiveEdge 2Go Mini, LiveEdge 2Go, and LiveEdge Rack.

"As Videon's footprint rapidly expands, becoming an embedded and critical component in major workflows, our customers recognized the value of Zixi's dependable and scalable broadcast-quality video delivery," said Lionel Bringuier, Chief Product Officer at Videon. "While Videon empowers users to harness edge computing, ingesting live video, audio, graphics, and data feeds to simplify first-mile workflows and create new revenue-generating opportunities, our collaboration with Zixi further elevates this capability, offering the industry's lowest TCO and unmatched management of linear and event channels at scale through the SDVP integration."

"With its unmatched efficiency and scale, reduced infrastructure requirements and transport stream egress cost reduction, Zixi opens new possibilities for growth, innovation, and enhanced video streaming experiences.," said John Wastcoat, SVP BD and Marketing, Zixi. "The integration with LiveEdge and partnership with Videon expands our ability to deliver exciting use cases like live betting, video assistant referee and dynamic, unique in-stadium second screen experiences." 

Videon will exhibit LiveEdge ecosystem’s native integration in the Zixi Partner Village at IBC 2023, for more details and to book a meeting please visit https://zixi.com/zixi-at-ibc-2023/

WALTHAM, Mass.—Fox Corp. has deployed Zixi for delivery of channels from 190 affiliates to their MVPD partners, using Zixi Broadcaster for broadcast quality live video delivery and ZEN Master and Intelligent Data Platform (IDP) for system management, orchestration and monitoring.

Fox affiliates are using Zixi, which will exhibit during IBC 2023, Sept. 15-18, at RAI Amsterdam, to transmit streams to Zixi Broadcasters, which is hosted by AWS and provides the ability to transcode each stream into the appropriate format before egress to the MVPDs. Taking advantage of the Zixi ZEN Master integration of the TAG Multiviewer, the affiliates feed sources into TAG layouts and send those mosaics to desired targets, enabling unified control and simplifying operations, the company said.

Fox uses a single control plane in Zixi ZEN Master with Zixi IDP powered by advanced AI and ML analytics, which support Auto Incidents using Multi-Object-Correlation-Analysis (MOCA) to cut through the noise and quickly perform Root Cause Analysis (RCA) for the resolution of problems in minutes rather than days or weeks, it said.

“Zixi has been a very collaborative partner in helping us design and implement our broadcast affiliate contribution workflow, and their ZEN Master product gives us excellent visibility into the health of the system. Choosing Zixi has undoubtedly contributed enormously to us meeting our rollout timeline,” said Alastair Hamilton, senior vice president of distribution engineering at Fox. 

The recent release of version 17 of the Zixi core software improves processing capacity, requiring 80% less compute. It also helps reduce transport stream egress cost by up to 50%, allowing organizations to maximize their resources, minimize expenses and deliver broadcast-quality video content reliably—with the effect of reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) of live video streaming implementations, Zixi said.

The efficiency eliminates the need for excessive virtual machines, leading to reduced infrastructure requirements and substantial cost savings. By cutting the transport stream egress cost in half, media organizations can allocate their resources more efficiently, redirecting budgetary allocations to other critical areas, it said.

See Zixi at IBC 2023 Stand 5.A85.

More information is available on the company’s website.

WALTHAM, Mass.—Zixi will focus on how content creators and distributors can reach worldwide audiences using the Zixi Enabled Network of more than 1,000 media companies and 400 tech partners around the world during IBC 2023, Sept. 15-18, at the RAI Amsterdam.

Visitors to the stand can discuss how their workflows might benefit from Zixi solution sets, including the D2C Gateway, the use of the ZEN Master control plane for advanced monitoring of AWS MediaConnect, satellite replacement deployments, delivery of streams from regional affiliates to vMPVDs, complex 5G deployments and Free Ad-Supported Television (FAST) channel distribution, the company said.

Zixi will kick off IBC 2023 as the title sponsor of the Devoncroft Summit with senior vice president John Wastcoat and CEO Gordon Brooks speaking at the event. The summit will bring together global industry leaders to discuss the business of media at the Tuschinski Theatre, Amsterdam on Sept. 14 at noon.

At its booth, Zixi will feature the latest integration with the TAG Multiviewer that enables use of a single control plane ZEN Master to feed sources to the TAG MV layouts and send those mosaics to desired targets, the company said.

As part of its Intelligent Data Platform (IDP), Zixi will demonstrate broadcast automation developments powered by advanced AI and ML analytics that enable features, such as Auto Incidents using Multi-Object-Correlation-Analysis (MOCA) to cut through the noise and quickly perform root cause analysis (RCA), it said.

Zixi will also exhibit the new capabilities of its Software-Defined Video Platform  (SDVP),  including ultra-low latency with high throughput, compute and efficiency improvements that enable workflow optimization and cost savings. As a part of the exhibition, Zixi will demonstrate the scale and efficiency of Zixi Broadcaster v17 with improved processing capacity requiring 80% less compute, it said.

Zixi will also highlight its partnership with AWS, including integration of SDVP in AWS Wavelength Zones.

See Zixi at IBC 2023 Stand 5.A85.

More information is available on the company’s website.

Visit the Amsterdam Devoncroft Summit 2023 website to register and for more details.

WALTHAM, Mass.—Zixi has released Zixi Edge Compute (ZEC), a high-performance managed live video edge streaming system that unlocks the full benefits of the company’s Software-Defined Video Platform, Zixi said.

Designed to meet the rapidly evolving needs of live video distribution and supporting diverse delivery workflows with higher performance and greater uptime, ZEC is installed on-premise as a Zixi endpoint, replacing legacy Zixi Feeder and Zixi Receiver software, it said.

“The release of ZEC provides our worldwide, market leading customers and partners the ability to deliver cutting edge, broadcast-quality live video deployments and new business models at reduced cost,” said Zixi vice president of products Tim Baldwin.

Installed on infrastructure at the network edge, ZEC facilitates a high-performance connection to Zixi Broadcaster, managing connections in and out. With ZEC, all sources and target destinations are connected with the Zixi Protocol, continuously and dynamically optimizing video delivery to achieve ultra-low latency, reliability and security. ZEC connects any industry edge device with dedicated monitoring and mission critical reliability, the company said.

ZEC software offers a robust feature set and can be configured to function as a Zixi Feeder for contribution, as a Zixi Receiver for distribution or as both a Feeder and Receiver. Additional local protocol support is available for workflows where HLS, RTMP, RTSP and other protocols are used to contribute from the local network over the public internet to the cloud, it said.

The new system can ingest streams on the local network and use the Zixi protocol to contribute to the cloud. Similarly, if another protocol is needed on the receive side, ZEC allows use of the Zixi protocol to pull the stream down from the cloud, saving on egress cost. It then can make the stream available in another protocol on the local network.

ZEC also provides protocol diversity along with richer API options for interoperable integrations and advanced telemetry and analytics with Zixi ZEN Master. ZEC licensing can be upgraded to enable fixed or temporary provisioning for additional normalization and curation with the SDVP Broadcaster platform. Programmatic REST APIs allow for schedulable cloud infrastructure provisioning, and ZEC provides agility to be commercially upgraded to a fully functional SDVP, the company said.

It allows Zixi Broadcaster to serve as an IPTV/OTT packager, offering transmuxing to HLS, LL DASH and RTMP to the user’s CDN origins for distribution. ZEC also future proofs any need for SCTE to out-cues and vice versa with any of the mentioned protocols, the company said. 

More information is available on the company’s website.

The media and entertainment industry has a responsibility to lead the charge towards a more sustainable future. As the world confronts the challenges of climate change, limited resources, and the need for social and environmental responsibility, M&E businesses must embrace sustainability as a cornerstone of their operations for the long term.

Without a doubt, there is a wide range of technology, operational and process-led approaches being implemented as part of both individual and coordinated efforts to improve sustainability performance. But how are key players in the industry addressing their responsibilities, what goals are they setting, and what are the most important priorities for delivering meaningful change? Here, Bubble Agency brings together industry leaders to share their approaches.

Innovative technologies and ethical supply chains are driving sustainability
"Our sustainability mission aims to better the earth’s environment and the people living on it with every new product made,” explained Tatsuya Umeo, CEO Yamaha Unified Communications. “From development, Yamaha Unified Communications designs innovative technologies that benefit society and have a positive effect on our environment. During procurement, we actively work to reduce CO2 emissions by conserving and effectively using the earth’s resources to build our products. 

We also advocate for human rights through our supply chain, by implementing ethical labor policies in production and logistics. Finally, though our products are known for their exceptionally long lives, Yamaha has introduced several initiatives for the proper disposal, collection, and recycling of used products that limits waste and enables reuse."

Virtual sets are revolutionizing eco-friendly production
“Sustainability in our industry comes in many shapes and sizes. The team at GhostFrame is delivering on sustainability targets through its efforts to enable production crews to seamlessly create and modify their projects without the unnecessary emissions required for reshoots and repeated uses of vehicles, tools, and equipment,” said Peter Angell of Ghost Frame.

“Depending on the production type GhostFrame can help save up to 75% of on-set time compared to standard virtual productions through the use of simultaneous virtual sets. With the use of our pioneering technology, productions like this are inherently more sustainable. By cutting back on required travel for actors and crew as well as physical sets and location shoots, the need for wasteful props and set dressings is eliminated by the virtual and instant VFX capabilities of GhostFrame.”

Embracing ESG frameworks and carbon offsetting partnerships
"At TMT Insights, developing our ESG framework was born out of the acknowledgement that implementing and educating ourselves on environmental ethics not only fosters company longevity, but creates a consciousness within us to stop and think about the carbon emissions we are creating in our everyday lives,” explained Patty Minichiello, Global Brand Experience Manager at TMT Insights.

“As proud members of Greenly and the DPP Sustainability Program, we have been able to educate ourselves, measure our carbon emissions and execute best practices on offsetting them. Through these partnerships, we can continue to measure and monitor our performance and set long-term targets to continue improving our supply chain efficiencies and helping build a healthy environmental and social system.”

Advocating for industry-wide change
"The future of the film, television, and streaming industry required an all-hands-on-deck approach to sustainability in every part of the world,” said Crystal Pham, Vice President at Trusted Partner Network (TPN), Motion Picture Association. “That’s why the Motion Picture Association has long supported our studio’s sustainability efforts. In recent years, the MPA has grown those efforts to support the work of the Sustainable Production Alliance, which includes all six of our member studios as well as other production partners.

"The MPA supports our member studios’ sustainability programs and the work of the Sustainable Production Alliance to ensure a more sustainable future for the global film, television, and streaming industry. Our support includes year-round advocacy and communications support, as well as programming on sustainability issues.

"Together, our studios have achieved great progress – not only moving to reusable utensils, recycling, and waste diversion, but implementing other sustainable programs such as reusable fuels, LED lighting, and reusing lumber on sets."

Minimizing environmental impact through hyperconverged tech
"We recognize the role technology plays in helping to reduce the environmental impact of media production,” explained Alun Fryer, Technical Marketing Lead – Hyperconverged Solutions at Ross Video. 

“One way we are addressing sustainability is through our focus on developing Hyperconverged solutions. Much like a mobile phone, which integrates many functions including cameras, GPS, and calendars, a Hyperconverged system can merge routing, multiviewers, signal processing, video production, and more into a single integrated platform. This reduces the number of physical devices required, which in turn reduces the energy consumption for the solution and associated cooling. 

"Ross is committed to incorporating sustainability into our technology. By leveraging hyperconverged systems, we help customers become more sustainable by reducing their environmental and equipment footprints while also simultaneously improving their operations. Working together, our industry can make meaningful progress toward a more sustainable future."

Boosting sustainability with remote production
"The pandemic introduced remote production with fewer people and trucks sent to an event producing sustainability and financial side benefits,” said John Wastcoat, SVP Alliances and Marketing at Zixi.

“We’ve introduced electric vehicles, biodiesel/hydrogen-powered generators, plant-based catering and increased remote functions. We’ve moved 24/7-powered production control rooms, whether in use or not, to the cloud on an as-needed basis using virtualized workflows that save energy.

"Several years ago, it was common to provide data throughput of 100Mb/s per computer core, but we’ve undertaken some innovative engineering to take this up to 1Gb/s in the latest version of Zixi software.

"Recent industry data from The DPP suggests that while sustainability is still a target, implementation is driven by ROI. If it delivers economic benefits, it will be actioned; if it doesn’t, it won’t.

Initiatives such as our work with CPU throughput and re-architecting cloud workflows for greater efficiency ticks both boxes, allowing organizations to save costs and be greener simultaneously."

Breaking language barriers to reduce business carbon footprint
“At XL8, we are deeply committed to sustainability and understand the significant role it plays in creating a better future for our planet,” said Janice Pearson, SVP, Sales & Strategy at XL8.

“Our dedication to sustainability is reflected in the design of our Real-time AI-based Interpretation App for Zoom meetings. Initially, we created this app to remove language barriers and enable participants to have more productive online meetings with individuals who speak different languages. 

"However, we also recognize that by supporting virtual meetings, we are helping to reduce the need for face-to-face interactions that require travel. This helps to lower carbon emissions and minimize the environmental impact of transportation, which is one of the major contributors to climate change. At XL8, we proudly support sustainability through our innovative real-time machine translation technology.”

It’s not the end-all, be-all answer for every production-based scenario. But according to some, it’s getting there.

Its capabilities to connect, streamline, produce and deliver have brought cloud-based production into the mainstream, with more cloud-based components being designed for the production ecosystem and more broadcasters using public cloud providers for high-value events and channels. 

The reasons are plentiful, with two key issues taking the lead: the ability to save on infrastructure costs and the desire to accelerate change in an ecosystem that seems ready-made for innovation.

“Cloud technology enables broadcasters to spin up multiple environments/systems, tinker with new production workflows and then have a template for reuse or tear it all down—wash, rinse, repeat as needed,” said Dave Norman, principal sales engineer for Enterprise Products for Telestream. “Leveraging [the] cloud drives this pace of innovation by orders of magnitude.”

Accelerated Workflows
When comparing cloud-based workflows with on-prem environments, the velocity at which teams can experiment increases massively, Norman said, and the cost of innovating a new workflow with a “never done before” approach is minimal. Cloud production is rapidly becoming the great enabler of “doing more,” he said.

Cloud production should be seen as a step change in the speed of production, “whether that is across different shooting locations or just the speed of getting content edited, reviewed and to the consumer very quickly on social media platforms,” said Paul Scurrell, senior vice president of product for Atomos. “Productions just become more ‘real-time.’”

Another reason that cloud-based productions have taken off? Cost. From the start, a product cost is minimized because the focus of a production is on infrastructure that is managed and supported by a third party. As a result, broadcasters and content creators are able to spend fewer resources on infrastructure and can instead focus on production technologies at the event itself. 

Cloud-based production is also being touted for its flexibility. After all, the ability to scale up and down and switch services on and off is easy to do when all the components are virtualized in the cloud, Scurrell said. “You basically use them—and pay for them—when you need them.”

The limit on a business’s production capacity is typically determined by the resources or equipment available. However, the use of cloud-based technology seeks to eliminate this restriction and allows resources to expand as demand for capacity increases, according to Harry Sampson, product manager of Cloud Production Solutions for Ross. 

“By facilitating businesses to scale up or down based directly on their production requirements helps enable greater utilization while also reducing large upfront costs associated with building additional production facilities,” he said.

Trickle Down
The efficiencies don’t stop there since cloud-based production also trickles down to staff and equipment efficiencies too. 

“Engineers, production staff and editors can support and work on a cloud-based production from anywhere, therefore expanding the scope of a production and access to talent, Telestream’s Norman said. “Cloud-based production also allows a previously unseen level of flexibility—as needs increase and decrease throughout the lifespan of a production, additional resources can easily be allocated or scaled-down without the historic hindrance of capital expenditure, coordination and facility management.”

This is indicative of where the industry is headed. 

“Deploying and managing a traditional on-premise production facility requires dedicated resources such as an IT department, commissioning and support teams as well as physical equipment rooms with air conditioning,” Sampson said. “By leveraging cloud-compute, businesses can benefit from increased efficiency by simplifying operations, automating tasks and minimizing manual intervention.” 

When deploying in a cloud environment, significant time and cost savings can be made, with no need for shipping, installation or cabling, he added. “As a result, turning on and off a production environment can now realistically be a quick and simple task.”

“Remote production and the ability to create content from anywhere is now a permanent fixture,” he added. “Cloud-based technology allows businesses to deploy live production resources globally across multiple regions at the click of button and give operators immediate access from anywhere with an internet connection.” 

The tools that facilitate those features are also maturing in capability. 

Technology such as the Ross Production Cloud is designed to enable gains in efficiency, flexibility and scalability, which should result in improved costs while also simultaneously ensuring that customers have access to familiar user interfaces. 

There are also technologies that can now quickly and cost-efficiently increase record channel capacity with cloud-deployed software. Telestream’s Lightspeed Live Capture software, for example, can run unshackled from physical hardware, meaning a user can increase their record footprint by sending contribution IP streams to a public cloud provider for recording sources that were previously not being recorded due to a lack of physical space at a venue.  “As soon as the event is complete, you can simply sunset the cloud environment,” Norman said. 

For some time, content creators have successfully turned to the cloud to send files of significant size during a production. Media Shuttle from Signiant, for example, allows a producer to leverage cloud storage and other cloud services in this way.

Adapting a New Mindset
As with any industry wide change, challenges remain—including concerns over security, availability, speed and access. It’s also important to note that cloud-based production requires a different skill set than those held by typical engineering teams who otherwise support on-premise technology. 

“Production teams need to also adapt their mindset to embrace cloud-based productions,” Norman said. “There is some lack of tangibility, for instance, that exists in a fully cloud-based production that does not exist on-premise.  Moreover, object storage is not file- or block-level storage, and there are some rough edges surrounding immediate access to objects that live in object storage.” 

Other concerns remain too. “When working on A+ grade productions with HDR/SDR heterogenous color profiles, as an example, cloud production becomes challenging today, and on-prem gear/tools play a critical role,” he said. 

Other roadblocks include concerns over network latency, bandwidth, interoperability, audio hiccups and transparent pricing. “It is important to acknowledge that production in the cloud may not be the ideal solution for all applications, and traditional hardware will undoubtedly continue to play a key role — let’s face it, some things have to stay on the ground,” said Ross’ Sampson. Yet despite these challenges, there are meaningful gains to be realized by leveraging cloud technology in live video production. 

“Historically, cloud technology has always evolved at pace and I see our industry moving in the same direction; many of the current hurdles won’t be around for long,” he said.

What continues to draw interest, despite lingering challenges, is the flexibility and low cost of entry, said John Wastcoat, senior vice president of Strategic Alliances and Marketing for Zixi. “Broadcasters are starting to adopt these models because it allows them the flexibility to produce more content and events, something that would not fit legacy production budgets.

“With the changes in viewing habits and the proliferation of IP networks, cloud-based production models are certain to take over traditional production models,” he added. 

Even the significant investment in legacy equipment won’t necessarily keep broadcasters from considering some type of cloud-based model. Enabling hybrid on-prem and cloud-based production environments is a key milestone to full cloud migration, according to Telestream’s Norman.

“If a broadcaster or content creator needs to run any type of production and they already possess premise-based equipment—as well as the staff that knows how to operate and support it — there is no need to swap this model for a cloud one instantly,” he said. Cloud-based production enables additional options for doing more than they can currently offer on-prem.” 

What else is ahead for cloud-based production? In the next year or two the industry can expect to see cloud production use cases trend upwards, with broadcasters continuing to experiment with more events/channels and the leveraging of public cloud providers. Some high-value productions will continue to leverage on-prem technologies while more cloud-based components will appear in the production ecosystem — and perhaps become the standard approach.

While the industry is not quite ready today for full-time production in the cloud, the future looks to be bright.  

WALTHAM, Mass.—Zixi has announced that Estrella Media’s EstrellaTV, has adopted Zixi to move from satellite to primary distribution over IP, broadcasting live linear channels to affiliates across the United States. 

"Zixi is the industry leader for the delivery of live IP video, and they showed why in every step of the process,” said Brian Kei, COO/CFO, at Estrella Media.  “The Zixi team quickly helped us architect the workflow, test the deployment and rapidly move to production, which will benefit Estrella Media operationally and economically.”

Launched in 2009, EstrellaTV has grown to 15 operated stations and 35 broadcast affiliates with national carriage agreements with major cable and satellite operators. 

Zixi was chosen for the deployment because of the advanced telemetry provided by the ZEN Master control plane for monitoring and orchestration, error free ultra-low latency delivery, consultative expertise and Zixi enablement of Harmonic devices. 

With a simple software update, Estrella Media was able to switch on Zixi and leverage the hardware infrastructure compatible with their new IP-based workflows, the companies said.  

The Estrella Media team is also able to orchestrate, monitor and manage their live streams at scale by using Zixi’s ZEN Master control plane and to centralize access to Zixi-enabled devices in the field, all from within ZEN Master. 

With its alerting system and source graphs that visualize stream health and analytics, administrators can easily investigate issues across all Zixi endpoints from within ZEN Master, shortening time and effort when conducting root cause analysis, the companies said. 

“We are ecstatic to be able to help Estrella Media transition to IP workflows and realize operational flexibility and dramatic savings," said Alexandra Giusto, senior director of business development, Zixi.  “ZEN Master provides Estrella Media the ability to manage and monitor stream deployments across this complex network to ensure broadcast-quality content delivery and quickly scale as needed."

Zixi will next be exhibiting at the 2023 NAB Show. To learn more and to book a meeting please visit Zixi at NAB 2023 visit https://zixi.com/zixi-at-nab-2023/.

WALTHAM, Mass.—Zixi will demonstrate a broad range of new product updates and unparalleled live video delivery performance running over the Zixi Enabled Network—which the company says is "the industry’s largest ecosystem"—at the 2023 NAB Show in Las Vegas, April 15-19. 

The Zixi Enabled Network consists of more than 1,000 media companies and 400 technology partners globally exchanging live video, creating powerful acceleration of new content acquisition, business models, and opportunities to reduce cost and generate revenue, according to Zixi.

Zixi will feature ultra-low latency, dramatic throughput, compute and efficiency improvements that “realize extraordinary cost reduction,” the company says. Zixi will highlight new and existing capabilities of the SDVP, including the scale and efficiency of Zixi Broadcaster v17 with improved processing capacity that Zixi says requires 80% less compute than other industry options that can result in up to 50% savings in egress cost for the same stream on other platforms. It supports deployments on ARM-based instances with significant savings on compute costs,  reduced carbon footprint, and dramatically improved resource utilization and updated architecture that can yield up to 200% throughput increase to 1Gbps per core, the company said. 

Zixi’s broad partnership with AWS will be on display, including integration of the SDVP in the AWS wavelength zone allowing customers to harness the power of 5G and enable widescale adoption of low latency 5G MEC architecture.  The orchestration and monitoring of AWS Elemental MediaConnect and MediaLive channels utilizing the ZEN Master control plane will be demonstrated live in both the Zixi and AWS booths at the show. ZEN Master also supports the management of JPEG XS, CDI flows, Elemental Link devices and is available in the AWS Marketplace for both public and private offer contracts. 

Partners in the Zixi Partner Village will include:

• Ant Media whose Ant Media Server (AMS) has integrated Zixi to help gaming and broadcasters by providing adaptive, ultra-low latency streaming by using WebRTC for sub .5 seconds latency.
• Evertz Microsystems: Zixi and Evertz users can leverage the natively integrated XPS Live Video Encoder Series, a real-time high quality and low latency video encoder and decoder module for live streaming, cloud-based, REMI / remote production, OTT, and on-demand applications including the MMA10G-TRXS-5G and MMA10G-TRXS-HC standalone HEVC/H.264 encoder and decoders with ZEN Master support for orchestration and management.
• Neutral Wireless will demonstrate Zixi running over the innovative “Network-in-a-Box”, a private network that allows for high-resolution wireless cameras to be connected and deliver live ultra-low-latency video feeds for production.
• Streann will exhibit the Zixi-enabled OTT platform.

Zixi will be in Booth W3301 of the West Hall in the LVCC. 

 WALTHAM, Mass.—Zixi has announced a partnership with Ant Media, and an integration with the Ant Media Server (AMS), which provides ready-to-use, scalable real-time video streaming solutions for live video streaming. 

AMS is designed to help broadcast TV stations, ed-tech, gaming, e-auction services, security or surveillance companies, and mobile app developers that need live video streaming infrastructure to build live video conferencing, webinar, or mass broadcast and monitoring application solutions.

The integration means that AMS users can connect to a wide range of broadcast-quality live sources and take advantage of premium features, the companies said.

"With integrated Zixi Protocol support, Ant Media Servers have access to the industry-leading performance, efficiency, security, and reliability that the SDVP enables", said Ahmet Oguz Mermerkaya CEO/co-founder, Ant Media. " By leveraging the combined AMS and SDVP solution, our common customers have access to high-performance, scalable real-time video distribution."

"This exciting integration was initially requested from video game and Esports live streaming platforms," added John Wastcoat, senior vice president of alliances and marketing, Zixi. "And Ant Media Server's WebRTC cutting edge innovation delivers the infrastructure necessary for next generation, mission critical applications such as live game shows, e-learning and mobile streaming."

AMS is a streaming engine that can ingest high-performance Zixi-enabled live sources and provide adaptive, ultra-low latency streaming by using WebRTC technology with sub .5 seconds latency, the companies reported. 

Highly scalable, AMS supports millions of viewers and streams. In addition to leveraging Zixi sources, users can also publish AMS streams out to the SDVP unlocking powerful workflows including advanced GPU accelerated live transcoding, Zixi patent pending sequenced hitless failover, connection bonding over disparate networks, purpose-built live operations dashboards, enhanced visualization and centralized management of live channels, the companies said. 

Ultra-Low Latency real-time streaming takes Zixi protected streams and delivers via a scaled WebRTC network with a full WebRTC stack, including SFU, MCU, and Data Channel for global delivery at scale, the companies said. 

Ant Media will be exhibiting and demonstrating the Zixi integration into AMS in Zixi's Partner Village at the 2023 Nab Show, West Hall Booth 3301, April 16th through the 19th. 

WALTHAM, Mass.—Spin Digital has integrated the Zixi Software-Defined Video Platform into its live encoding and playback solutions. 

Together, the solutions offer the live encoding, compute efficient playback and transport performance to unlock new immersive viewing experiences, including up to 8K/HDR resolution, efficient HEVC and VVC compression and VR/AR optimized video delivered with error-free reliability and ultra-low latency, Zixi said.

Spin Digital’s live encoding and playback solutions enable ultra-high resolution 4K, 8K and 16K video processing with support for high dynamic range, high frame rate, wide color gamut and 360-degree video and virtual reality. 

Integration of Zixi with the Spin Enc Live, Spin Player HEVC and Spin Player VVC products, enables reliable transport of these high-performance streams that can leverage network bonding, enabling live video to span seamlessly across multiple networks to maximize available bandwidth and add resiliency and enhanced protections, including Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) connection security and live content encryption support, it said.

Users leveraging the Spin Digital live encoders can now accept as well as broadcast from Zixi-enabled live sources and to Zixi Broadcaster target destinations. This enables users to deliver high-quality content with greater bandwidth efficiency at lower latencies and with increased reliability. Dynamic Forward Error Correction (FEC) and Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ) combine to ensure reliable delivery without adding significant latency while maximizing available bandwidth for content delivery. The bandwidth efficiency and error-free delivery included with the integrated solution are vital for supporting advanced UHD/8K video applications, it said.

"Spin Digital is leading the charge in to the next generation of media and entertainment applications, and we are thrilled to be able to deliver this joint best-of-breed experience," said John Wastcoat, senior vice president of alliances and marketing at Zixi. "Spin Digital has an excellent reputation for next-generation innovation with their dynamic, feature rich offerings, and we look forward to a successful partnership.”

More information is available on the Zixi website.

WALTHAM, Mass.— Zixi has announced an integration of Zixi-as-a-Service (ZaaS) with Cinedigm’s Matchpoint Platform Suite. 

The move will help Cinedigm expand its free-ad-supported streaming (FAST) channel business. 

"Zixi delivers actionable insights on the health and performance of fast channels, enabling the operational agility we need to rapidly scale,” said Tony Huidor, chief technology & product officer at Cinedigm.  “Cinedigm has scaled to the point where we need to more directly manage distribution of our FAST channel portfolio, this partnership with Zixi makes that operationally possible and economically feasible.”

“Cinedigm needed a way to operationally manage the end-user experience,” said Peter Dawidzik, Director of Sales, Zixi.  “Integrating the full suite of Zixi capabilities with video-optimized cloud infrastructure, ZaaS delivers economic, performance and operational efficiencies that are supporting the rapidly scaling FAST channel delivery services Cinedigm offers.”

Through a diverse mix of premium SVOD services and dedicated AVOD and FAST channels, the Cinedigm has a portfolio of 30 streaming channels offering premium content in a variety of popular genres to 90 million consumers worldwide on more than a billion devices.

Cinedigm developed its own proprietary solution, Matchpoint Dispatch, for managing their massive library of film and television content and enriching content metadata, enforcing territorial along with platform rights and distributing scheduling metadata associated with the content library. 

Through a direct integration with ZaaS, Matchpoint utilizes Gracenote’s programming metadata and proprietary IDs to help organize assets, aid in audience discovery and support content scheduling across major FAST channel platforms, the companies said. 

Cinedigm’s Linear Playout partner originates a mezzanine Zixi-enabled master transport stream for each of Cinedigm’s channels, pushing these across geographically diverse signal paths to ZaaS. 

ZaaS provides Cinedigm real-time telemetry data, advanced network congestion and error-correction management and significant bandwidth efficiency improvements over deployed legacy systems. With well-structured hierarchical entertainment feed data, Cinedigm builds programmatic playout schedules. An electronic program guide is generated for each of over 20 channels, including defining ad avails within the program schedule. ZaaS transcode engines create a quality optimized ABR streaming ladder packaged for distribution to the content origin servers and validates stream health and compliance with each partner’s delivery specifications. ZaaS provides broadcast infrastructure as a service, enabling media companies and service providers to quickly leverage IP to ingest and distribute live video with ultra-low latency, allowing the push or pull of live and live linear video into or out of the cloud, Zixi said. 

With this service broadcasters can easily scale to add new partners, leveraging ZaaS for video processing as well as the additional data, analytics, security and Quality of Service that professional broadcast requires. ZaaS allows media and entertainment companies to extend existing on-premises infrastructures and capabilities to the cloud, and with ZEN Master, the industry's leading virtual control plane, users can orchestrate, manage and monitor broadcast quality, low latency live video workflows from anywhere in the world. Delivering the Zixi protocol, the most robust and mature live video protocol in the industry, ZaaS also supports RIST, RTP+FEC, HLS, CMAF HLS, DASH and RTMP to provide the industry’s most universal solution for ingest and delivery across any IP network and edge device including over 400 integrated partners. The SDVP also includes transcoding, packaging, and CDN origin for OTT workflows, as well as Packet Identifier (PID) mapping allowing content to be normalized to certain encoding parameters with PIDs aligned to downstream workflows, Zixi reported. 

WALTHAM, Mass.— Zixi has announced a partnership with Marshall Electronics to integrate the Zixi Software Defined Video Platform (SDVP) into Marshall's lineup of IP cameras.

As part of the collaboration, Marshall cameras now include native support for full Zixi-enabled delivery with compatibility extending to all Marshall Broadcast and Pro AV-over-IP solutions.

All standard IP camera versions can be loaded with the Zixi-enabled firmware allowing existing Marshall operators to easily add Zixi support to their cameras, unlocking premium connectivity support and direct integration with the full suite of capabilities in the SDVP. 

“Zixi is the leader for IP video delivery in the broadcast community and is requested by some of the industry's largest integrators,” said Tod Musgrave, senior director cameras, Marshall Electronics. “With Zixi integrated, Marshall Cameras now have access to the leading performance, efficiency, security and reliability that the SDVP enables.”

“We are thrilled for our mutual customers that Marshall has natively integrated Zixi into the IP Camera lineup,” added John Wastcoat, SVP alliances and marketing, Zixi. “Marshall has an excellent reputation in the broadcast community with their feature rich cameras and we look forward to a fruitful partnership.”

Supported IP camera models include CV355-30X, CV420-30X, CV620, CV730 and the top level CV730-BHN/WHN platforms, allowing users to deliver live video utilizing industry best performance, interoperability, resilience and security that the SDVP enables. 

The SDVP’s Zixi protocol is a resilient congestion and network-aware protocol that adjusts to varying network conditions and employs patented, dynamic Forward Error Correction techniques for error-free video transport over IP with 99.9999% uptime at minimal latency, the company said. 

Zixi will be exhibiting an integrated Marshall CV630-IP at IBC2022 in Hall 1, D. 81. For more details and to book a meeting please visit Zixi at IBC2022. 

Marshall will also be onsite at IBC2022 (Stand 11.C23).

FRISCO, Texas—MediaKind has announced a number of new technology advances in its portfolio of edge products that enable live events to be captured and transmitted reliably to the cloud and distributed securely from the cloud to regional networks. 

These advances include: adding support of Zixi technologies alongside SRT on its modular CE1 and RX1 edge platforms; next-generation security and monitoring for MediaKind’s Director solution; increased link resiliency; superior IP discovery and control; and user experience advancements.

The edge portfolio combines all the decoding, encoding, transcoding, content replacement, content protection, and reliable IP transport technology developed by MediaKind, enabling the expansion of cloud-based linear workflows, the company said. 

“Some of the world's biggest brands have been requesting Zixi integrated into MediaKind’s CE1 and RX1 offerings,” said John Wastcoat, senior vice president alliances, and marketing, Zixi. “We are thrilled to partner with MediaKind and deliver best-in-class solutions to the market, allowing our mutual customers to seamlessly leverage proven architectures with market-tested technology.”

“By adding support of Zixi technologies to our pre-existing SRT and FEC options, we are enhancing the flexibility, security, and resilience of our CE1, RX1, and CE Mini products at a time when media companies increasingly need integration options for their video workflows,” added Boris Felts, chief product officer, MediaKind. “Advancing the MediaKind edge portfolio means our customers continue to receive access to industry-leading, resilient, cloud-ready, and highly secure live end-to-end workflow capabilities that tackle the most demanding live event coverage, now and in the future.”

MediaKind’s edge portfolio architecture combines an efficient cloud-native design, leveraging software containers and micro-services to expand its capabilities seamlessly, with a platform supporting hardware acceleration and broadcast video interfaces, the company said. 

This combination enables live video delivery within the most demanding live contribution and distribution environments. Thanks to this architecture, Zixi-protected congestion and network-aware protocols further expand the Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) and Forward Error Correction (FEC) options available on MK CE1 and MK RX1. The integration offers MediaKind customers greater flexibility and interoperability with cloud contribution and linear programming systems.

Additional edge portfolio development include:

• MK RX1 (receiver and media gateway) – now includes the latest evolution of MediaKind’s Director capability, enhancing security with 128-bit rotating keys, and maintaining the technology’s traditional key values, including over-the-air control and lifecycle management. RX1 also receives dual redundant transport streams for hitless switching with SMPTE 2022-7, enabling it to perform continuous, seamless decodes when upstream feeds lose integrity.
• MK CE1 (media contribution encoder) – an improved user interface and update of the CE1’s SMPTE ST 2110 capabilities aligning with Networked Media Open Specifications (NMOS) discovery and control. It also now offers a greater variety of workflows with the support of ASI input alongside IP input for remux use cases and the ability to interface with cloud platforms through its Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP).

In addition the company has launched the latest addition to the portfolio family, the MK CE Mini.

A high-performance, single-channel contribution encoder. CE Mini addresses the demands of live content contribution at temporary live events, such as college campus transmissions and ‘pop-up’ sports broadcasts, offering cost-efficient, low-power encoding in a portable, compact form unit.

MediaKind will showcase its edge devices' full spectrum of features at IBC2022 (#1.09). To book a meeting with MediaKind at IBC2022, click here.

WASHINGTON—Like any other technology, artificial intelligence and machine learning for video production and distribution came about in an effort to build a better mousetrap. Any product that does more with less effort has an advantage over products that don’t make the leap to the latest technology—that’s why self-driving car technology is often in the news.

There is no self-driving product for the television industry… no editing device that will automatically assemble a program, no camera that will point and adjust itself perfectly without human intervention, and no transmitter or distribution chain that will perfectly adjust itself to changing conditions and signal anomalies.

In Post
Those things are coming, however. There is no way to say exactly when, but my bet is that we are closer today to amazing artificial intelligence technology in the television industry than we are to the DTV transition in 2009. (And that seems like just a couple years ago!)

Meanwhile, there are several companies pioneering artificial intelligence and machine learning products that target a range of television applications. One of those is Blackmagic Design, which has AI functions in its DaVinci Resolve editing software.

“DaVinci Resolve Studio’s Magic Mask uses the DaVinci Neural Engine to automatically create masks for an entire person, object or specific feature, such as face or arms,” said Shawn Carlson, product specialist for DaVinci Resolve at Blackmagic Design. “DaVinci Neural Engine functions in Magic Mask offers specific human feature recognition for difficult isolation needs, like hair with bangs and exposed skin on a bearded face.”

Removing an object in a video shot can be difficult, especially if there is a lot of movement. DaVinci Resolve Studio users can remove unwanted objects using a combination of Power Windows, tracking and the object removal plug-in. The DaVinci Neural Engine analyzes the shot using machine learning and AI, and determines how to remove the object from the scene. Users can adjust various settings until the object disappears.

Carlson said that the DaVinci Neural Engine is for visual elements only at this time, and does not have any role with audio.

Streaming Data
The transport of streaming data is another function that benefits from AI and machine learning. With so much data moving so quickly there is no way that human observers can watch it all and compensate as necessary—it’s the perfect job for artificial intelligence.

Zixi is one company that uses AI to monitor streaming data and provide alerts and adjustments in the event of signal degradation. “We use AI/ML in two areas: video transport and video content analysis,” said Andrew Broadstone, senior director of product management at Zixi. “Low-level protocol measurements, such as round-trip time, network congestion and retransmission rate, are used to determine link quality and to anticipate upcoming signal degradation.”

Much of what Zixi tests is the transport stream quality, but the company’s quality measurements also drill down into the video encoding to ensure image and sound quality are maintained.

“Certain kinds of content analysis are independent of codec,” Broadstone said. “We also use AI and ML to estimate the perceptual quality of live video [VMAF] without a reference, but for this the video must be H.264/AVC transport stream format. In general, our customers overwhelmingly use H.264 since it is the most compatible format across devices.”

Broadstone said that Zixi’s IDP product uses tens of measurements collected every few seconds across all participants in a video workflow to determine what the company calls its “health score.” This health score lets IDP predict signal path quality and degradation.

“Zixi Health Score is the output of multiple models trained using gradient boosting across the entire Zixi data set with many months of data,” he added. “Zixi Health Score therefore is not a simple set of rules. However, it is typical to see the Health Score drop significantly when there is a sudden change in packet round-trip time, or if raw packet loss steadily increases.”

The aim of Zixi IDP is to anticipate problems and alert operators to the root cause, Broadstone said.

Cloud-Ready Monitoring
Monitoring data streams is also at the forefront of Interra System’s ORION, a real-time software-based, cloud-ready content monitoring system that enables service providers to deliver clean video. 

ORION provides real-time monitoring of IP/SDI/SDIoIP-based infrastructures that looks at all aspects of video streams such as QoS, QoE, closed captions, ad-insertion verification, reporting and troubleshooting. 

According to Ramandeep Singh Sandhu, senior management staff member at Interra Systems, ORION performs monitoring functions on hundreds of services simultaneously from a single platform, providing an operator with a single point of visibility and access to information such as status, alerts, alarms, visible impairments, error reports and triggered captures.

What are the typical anomalies that trigger an alert in ORION? “A total signal loss condition will typically be preceded by continuity counter errors, substantial reduction in program bitrates, high network jitter and packet drops,” Sandhu said. “QoS/QoE scores computed by ORION will also show significant dips in such cases.”

Identifying On-Screen Objects
As you might imagine, web-streaming specialist Amazon Web Services uses AI/ML for a range of applications. One example gives customers flexibility and precision when identifying on-screen objects. For example, AWS’s Media2Cloud can use Amazon Rekognition AI to identify that the on-screen object is a dog or something else.

According to Alex Burkleaux and Evan Statton of AWS, Rekognition is constantly adding new names, objects, and other features it can detect. For example, if a customer requires identification of specific kinds of dogs, Rekognition’s Custom Labels can be programmed to differentiate among images of different kinds of dogs, such as “labrador,” “terrier” or “boxer.”

Of course, recognizing faces is a frequent job for AWS Rekognition, and the faces of many celebrities are already in the database. Rekognition Face Search provides a mechanism for detecting people who are not part of the Celebrity Detection data set.

Where does all this AI power come from? Is it more processor power or better programming?

“They go hand in hand,” Burkleaux and Statton said. “Processing power and data are required to build and train machine-learning models. When you’re using AWS AI Services such as Amazon Rekognition and Amazon Transcribe, this is part handled by the managed service provided by AWS.”

AI/ML products may seem almost magical at times today, but they are only going to get more capable over time. Eventually, we may get to a Siri- or Alexa-like interface where you can simply describe what you want and have the service do the heavy lifting.

For example, you might say something like, “Analyze these six video clips and identify if any of the cars in them are Chevrolets” or “Monitor this data stream and report any conditions that either exceed standard parameters or consistently get close to a fault situation.” Of course, you might have an additional conversation to ensure the AI assistant understands what you are asking—that’s understandable.

It’s hard to say if that is five or 10 years in the future. It might be shown at next year’s NAB Show.

You can be sure that change is coming, and that there will be more AI/ML in the future.

Verizon, Bloomberg Media, Zixi and AWS have launched a 5G test project, designed to explore how edge computing can enable networks to stream live 4K UHD content without the need for satellites.

In the proof of concept trial, Bloomberg is using Verizon 5G Edge with AWS Wavelength and Zixi’s Software Defined Video Platform (SDVP) to package and deliver live feeds of Bloomberg TV+ in 4K UHD. The companies will also test streaming Bloomberg TV+ 4K UHD content via 5G and edge compute, powered by AWS, directly to consumers’ 5G-connected devices.

The trial is the latest in a string of consortia set up to test 5G in broadcast and journalism use cases, following this week's announcement by Deutsche Telekom and RTL Deutschland.

The test sees Bloomberg Media sending UHD video using Verizon 5G Edge with AWS Wavelength coupled with Zixi’s software to quickly process the video into multiple streams for broadcast across various platforms. This will be followed by another trial that will involve near real-time native translation of Bloomberg TV+ content for transcripts, captioning and subtitles distributed globally.

“Bloomberg Media is committed to continuous innovation and experimentation of technologies to better reach our global audience of business leaders with the insights, information and solutions they need,” said Roman Mackiewicz, chief information officer, Bloomberg Media. “This proof of concept trial combines Verizon’s 5G and mobile edge computing capabilities with Bloomberg TV+ premium 4K UHD content to create a modern streaming news experience with the potential for true industry disruption.”

“It has been fantastic working with Verizon, Bloomberg Media and AWS to deliver pristine 4K UHD quality content over 5G while leveraging edge compute,” added Gordon Brooks, executive chairman and CEO, Zixi. “Verizon 5G Edge with AWS Wavelength and Zixi can potentially transform the M&E industry.”

WALTHAM, Mass.—LTN Global has added Zixi access to its network, enabling more than 300 Zixi-integrated partners to deliver feeds to its managed service network, Zixi said today. 

The LTN network supports full-time, occasional use and event production workflows and offers 24/7 operators and monitoring teams. It can reliably deliver content anywhere in the world with guaranteed reliability and low latency, it said.

The network provides the foundation for the LTN ecosystem, which powers integrated workflows from cloud production and content aggregation to signaling and monetization through delivery. The ecosystem includes a portfolio of acquisition, decoration and signaling, production playout and other services and delivers them as complete customer-managed solutions or outsourced production services.

With the LTN Global-Zixi partnership, Zixi SDVP will be supported as a first- and last-mile or on- and off-ramp to services, sites and partners on the LTN network and ecosystem. Media companies that need to support diverse distribution and acquisition workflows across locations can access the value-added services of the ecosystem.

The more than 300 Zixi Enabled Network customers, integrated hardware and software applications, platforms and service providers that have standardized on Zixi will provide increased access in and out of LTN’s network.

Zixi’s Intelligent Data Platform aggregates 3 billion data points a day from across the Zixi Enabled Network and uses advanced analytics, machine learning and Zixi's unique video telemetry data to provide alerts based on patterns and insights that help media companies streamline broadcast operations by focusing resources to fix errors before they occur and reduce costs from root cause analysis, the company said.

“Zixi has invested years of hard work integrating the SDVP into every part of the media workflow” said John Wastcoat, senior vice president of alliances and marketing at Zixi. “We are extremely happy that our customers and partners can now use those relationships to access the managed services of the LTN Network.”

See Zixi at IBC 2021, Dec. 3-6, in Amsterdam at Stands 5.A45ca and 4.L101.

More information is available on the company’s website.

WALTHAM, Mass.—Ad Insertion Platform (AIP) has integrated the Zixi protocol with its broadcast and OTT ad insertion solutions, giving content providers new ways to monetize live channels, the company announced.

AIP’s DAIConnect SSAI platform enables one-to-one replacements of ad breaks for live streams as well as one-to-one insertions of ad breaks for on-demand content. This allows manipulation of the stream manifest without altering the video of customers. Composed of several modules that can be used together DAIConnect has at its core the Ad Break Composer, which is used to create user-targeted Ad Pods, the company said.

Built on editable templates, the composer makes it possible to mix ads that can come from one or more ad servers of supply-side platforms (SSPs) and other types of ad bumpers, interstitials, promos and templates catered to customer’s needs, it said.

The AIP Manifest Manipulator inserts the created Ad Pod at the manifest level for each end user, and all ads and content are transcoded on the customer video profiles to avoid poor user experiences. The AIP Optimizer optimizes value of the ad break inventory enabling a unified header bidding auction by connecting multiple demand sources to retrieve the highest revenue for each opportunity. AIP Insight enables the customer to see and analyze data about ad sales, viewership and performance, the company said.

AIP customers can ingest distribution feeds into the Zixi SDVP, control the SCTE-35 markers and leverage Zixi live transcoding for OTT distribution in HLS or MPEG-DASH, easily enabling ad insertion and monetization of these feeds, it said.

Combining DAIConnect with the SDVP allows the customer to have an OpEx model subscription that includes additional OTT services to answer broadcasters and operator’s needs. With the integration of the SDVP, AIP users can now leverage Zixi for live transcoding and seamless delivery of broadcast quality content over IP, it said.

The Zixi protocol is a resilient congestion and network-aware protocol that adjusts to varying network conditions and employs patented, dynamic Forward Error Correction techniques for error-free video transport over IP with 99.9999% uptime at minimal latency, the company said.

It also provides best-in-class security with DTLS and AES encryption, allows for protected multicast transport, provides bandwidth efficiency and enables encoder backpressure, it said.

Zixi ZEN Master is also integrated to enable users to manage large-scale configurations and orchestrate, analyze, monitor, alert, and report on live video streams and devices across the Zixi Enabled Network of customers, integrated hardware and software applications, and platforms and service providers standardized on Zixi, it said. 

The SDVP’s Intelligent Data Platform (IDP) provides the transparency and control needed to guarantee reliable operation. Using advanced analytics, machine learning, and AI, the IDP can intelligently alert users to problems before they happen through alerts, graphs, maps, charts, and data visualizations that enable users to quickly interpret vast amounts of stream data and ensure broadcast-quality results.

More information is available on the Zixi website. 

Zixi will present with AIP on server-side ad insertion (SSAI) from the NAB Show on Oct. 12, 11-11:45 a.m. EDT. Click the link to register.

More information is available on the company’s website. 

WALTHAM, Mass.—Zixi today said it will begin offering Zixi as a Service (ZaaS), a broadcast infrastructure service enabling fast ingest and distribution of live video over any IP network with ultra-low latency, on a worldwide basis.

ZaaS makes it possible for quick deployment of transport workflows that offer all of the functionality of the company’s Software-Defined Video Platform (SDVP), the company said.

“ZaaS gives content owners efficiencies to easily syndicate and deliver their live linear content to multiple affiliates and gives providers a seamless way to acquire that content from anywhere in the world,” said Uri Avni, co-founder and CTO of Zixi.

“This flexible offering also lets service providers operate a fully managed content exchange platform for live linear video between content owners and consumers,” he said.

With ZaaS, media and entertainment companies can extend existing on-premise infrastructures and capabilities to the cloud to deliver broadcast-quality video. At the same time, M&E enterprises can rely on Zixi’s ZEN Master control plane to provision, orchestrate, manage and monitor workflows from anywhere in the world, Zixi said. 

While ZaaS will now be offered globally as the preferred way to deploy SDVP, M&E companies still have the option to deploy Zixi on premise or in their own cloud, it said.

ZaaS offers a completely redundant video pipeline, providing media companies protection against failure for near 100% uptime with the company’s hitless failover solution for redundant transmission, it said.

Broadcasters are deployed in geographically diverse data centers and, on both the sending and receiving sides, Zixi software is connected to independent ISPs and employs hitless failover for maximum reliability, Zixi said.

Many use ZaaS for universal aggregation and distribution to multiple affiliates for 24/7 live, linear workflows. Users also can create efficient workflows for occasional use events, it said.

Service broadcasters can scale to add new partners, leveraging ZaaS for cloud video processing as well as the additional data, analytics, security and Quality of Service that consumers mandate, Zixi said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

WALTHAM, Mass.—Zixi and MediaKind are collaborating to integrate Zixi’s Software-Defined Video Platform with MediaKind’s CE Mini contribution encoder to assist with IP video delivery.

Zixi SDVP has been natively integrated into all MediaKind CE Mini encoders as standard. This enables users of the CE Mini encoders to stream to any deployed Zixi Broadcaster. Zixi ZEN Master is also integrated, allowing users to manage large-scale configurations and orchestrate, analyze, monitor, alert and report on live video streams and devices across the Zixi Enabled Network.

The Zixi protocol is designed to adjust to varying network conditions and uses patented Forward Error Correction techniques for error-free video transport over IP. It also has DTLS and AES encryption, allows for protected multicast transport, provides bandwidth efficiency and enables encoder backpressure.

“We are happy to partner with Zixi and deliver best in class solutions to the market, that will allow our customers to seamlessly leverage proven architectures with market tested technology,” said Boris Felts, head of products, MediaKind.

For more information, visit www.zixi.com.  

WALTHAM, Mass.—Zixi has announced that it will be supplying FreeCast, a content discovery and management engine for streaming content, with its Software-Defined Video Platform (SDVP) for B2B distribution of live linear channels over IP networks.

Specifically, FreeCast will use SDVP for SelectTV, a service designed for bandwidth distributors and device manufacturers. SDVP helps with live video delivery for SelectTV clients, able to adjust to varying network conditions and using Forward Error Correction techniques for video transport over IP with minimal latency. SDVP also provides DTLS and AES encryption, allows for protected multicast transport and bandwidth efficiency.

FreeCast also uses Zixi’s ZEN Master control panel to manage and monitor streaming deployments, and configure and orchestrate live broadcast channels across protocols and the Zixi Enabled Network. It also allows for control of the edge, network and cloud with full telemetry visualization of network streams.

“Zixi is very proud to help FreeCast leverage IP infrastructure to cost-effectively distribute its live linear channels in broadcast-quality to MDUs (multi-dwelling units) across the U.S.,” said Paul Parente, senior director of Sales at Zixi. “SelectTV’s next gen solution for a la carte TV allows its customers to provide a quality viewing experience of thousands of live channels easily accessible via end-users’ personal devices, for a convenient entertainment offering that’s easy to implement wherever Wi-Fi is available.”

For more information, visit www.zixi.com.  

MELBOURNE, Australia—Mediaproxy has upgraded its LogServer logging and monitoring system with the ability to work with Zixi and SRT formats. The update allows LogServer to be used by OTT service operators running low latency streams.

Zixi is a software-defined live streaming platform that can produce broadcast-quality service over any IP network, protocol, cloud provider or edge device. SRT (Secure Reliable Transport), meanwhile, is an open-source video transport protocol based on UDP (User Datagram Protocol) technology to deliver high-quality, low-latency video over the public internet.

“Having native support for both Zixi and SRT protocols in LogServers will allow customers to take advantage of our advanced toolsets for compliance, monitoring and analysis,” said John O’Halloran, Mediaproxy chief technology officer.

In addition, Mediaproxy recently joined the SRT Alliance, which will allow it to further develop its LogServer monitoring and analysis technology for low latency OTT applications.

For more information, visit www.mediaproxy.com.  

For many different reasons, 2020 has been a year we will never forget. Global lockdown orders have elevated viewing figures for all media to unprecedented levels, with subscription to and streaming of OTT services a particular beneficiary. More content has been watched by more people than ever before, but what are some of the trends behind the headline figures, and what can they tell us about the way that the industry has rapidly evolved during the pandemic?

From our conversations with our customers and partners, and being involved in industry research projects around the world, we have identified the six following trends that will have a key impact in 2021 and beyond.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTENT

Increasingly we are seeing that companies both create and distribute content, with very few either sticking to solely creation or distribution, but rather taking total ownership of the entire vertical.

We have seen an increasing move towards live content as the year has unfolded. Despite 2020 being a dreadful year for live events—with sports particularly affected as seasons paused and then truncated—live entertainment has fared little better and we are starting to see live content featured more heavily in the plans of streaming services, and even overtaking on-demand in some cases. 

This is almost a complete reversal from the start of the pandemic, and live linear is a very large part of this movement, as witnessed by the launch of services such as NBC Universal’s Peacock, Fubo’s expansion and successful IPO, as well as the growing interest from OTT providers in offering local feeds to their subscribers.

AN INCREASE IN VIRTUALIZATION

We are seeing a big growth in software-defined streaming infrastructure versus hardware-defined infrastructure.

This trend goes back over a decade but seems to be accelerating in the pandemic as people move urgently toward remote production workflows and are therefore having to implement plans that they have already had on the drawing board for some time. Currently, the reliance on software-defined vs. hardware-defined infrastructure is hovering around a 65:35 split, but we expect this to shift further to a 90:10 ratio over the next few years.

DELIVERY OVER IP

We are a long way from the time when broadcast video was delivered over finite types of connectivity. Fifty-six percent of the respondents in a recent survey on the state of the streaming industry are now saying they will be using standard internet connections over the next two years, with the rest comprised of 25% CDN, 12% fiber, 4% cellular and 2% satellite. 

As a caveat, the survey did not allow for multiple answers, but we were surprised to see that the internet was that high and conversely cellular was so low.

THE GROWTH OF 5G

The 5G introduction to the consumer market has been complex, but in terms of B2B usage it is already starting to make waves, and as a result we’re conducting active production pilots with major broadcasters in partnership with Verizon and AWS Wavelength Zones. The first workflow that we are putting into production is distribution, effectively a satellite-replacement distribution workflow over 5G.

Distribution is exciting work and seen across the industry as a key use case for the future of 5G, followed closely by direct-to-consumer applications. Contribution, B2B uses and in-venue delivery are all gaining interest but not quite yet building up significant momentum. We suspect that contribution specifically will end up becoming significant in the coming years.

What level of impact will 5G have on video streaming strategies? Over the next two years opinion is mixed, with the industry largely spread out on a scale between a total game-changer or having no impact at all. Though if anything, opinion is slightly weighted to the latter end of that scale.

THE NEED FOR INTEROPERABILITY

Unsurprisingly given the industry’s increasing path to complexity, the majority of companies are stating that interoperability is of the highest importance to their streaming infrastructures.

This is partly a result of people doubling down on their existing infrastructures and not wishing to throw everything out with the installation of a new system and makes perfect sense given the level of mergers that have dominated the media industry, as well as modern production workflows that touch far more than the single organization. No one wants to find themselves trapped in a silo.

THE IMPACT OF MACHINE LEARNING

The streaming industry sees quality of service as being the primary use for machine learning (ML) deployments, with predictive maintenance and transport optimization tied for second place. Anomaly detection and security are distant considerations, though arguably all of these are related to QoS in one way or another. 

As shifting workflows within and between media companies increase in complexity, the data and analytics gathered from across that supply chain can be mined and interpreted using AI and ML tools to ensure optimal Quality of Transport, Quality of Service, Quality of Content and therefore create optimal Quality of Experience for end users.  

We see potential in using AI and ML to streamline broadcast workflows even further, including better identifying root cause analysis, optimizing video transport across different IP networks and much more. We’ve also used ML to work out that there are situations where we shouldn’t be using ML, and that some things are much better being hard-coded in. In other words, there are valuable things you can learn from ML even if you don’t put it into production.

One thing ML can’t do is predict exactly what trends we’ll be talking about as 2021 unwinds. At this time a year ago few among us could have foreseen the impact of COVID-19 on the industry and the rest of the world. But these six trends represent issues are the starting point, and it will be fascinating to monitor how they develop over the next 12 months.

John Wastcoat is senior vice president of strategic alliances and marketing at Zixi.

WALTHAM, Mass.—Zixi, using the AWS Wavelength on the Verizon 5G Edge, is testing live and linear 4K and 8K broadcast media workflows for 5G distribution. Zixi, an AWS partner, says that it is working with a global broadcaster on these tests.

Zixi uses AWS Wavelength to power its Software Defined Video Platform (SDVP) to help content providers deliver new kinds of live streamed sports and entertainment experiences. SDVP uses ultra-low latency access to AWS compute and storage services enabled by AWS Wavelength at the Verizon 5G Edge to process UHD videos and compress it for delivery to mobile devices.

The SDVP also utilizes AWS Wavelength’s ability to support a range of remote and distributed production scenarios for increased production workflow efficiency, Zixi says.

According to Eric Bolten, vice president of business development for Zixi, the field tests currently underway are showing latency below 10 ms over an 80-100 Mbps pipe.

“The goal for us—AWS, Verizon and Zixi—is to address the three main elements of live streaming success: latency, overhead and uptime,” said Bolten. “The industry is now ready to go. The industry has evolved from science experiments to real-world production deployments today, not next year.”

For more information, visit aws.amazon.com/wavelength/. 

WALTHAM, Mass.—Zixi and Google Cloud are forming an alliance designed to help with the delivery of end-to-end broadcast quality live video solutions over IP using the Google Cloud infrastructure for media, telecommunications and entertainment verticals.

The partnership sees the integration of Zixi’s Software-Defined Video Platform (SDVP) with Google Cloud, using the Google Cloud infrastructure and platform capabilities, as well as Zixi APIs. This lets users deploy Zixi Broadcasters using Zixi ZEN Master and have access to telemetry data on the network, transport, intra-cloud delivery and associate edge devices in the end-to-end workflow, per Zixi. 

In addition, Zixi SDVP has been natively integrated with Google Compute Engine storage to facilitate contribution and distribution to content and broadcast partners. Zixi SDVP accepts 17 industry protocols and containers, including Zixi, NDI, RIST, SRT, TCP, BBR, Multipath TCP and WebRTC.

For more information, visit www.zixi.com.  

UPDATED 9/8: The annual IBC Show in Amsterdam, like nearly all conferences in 2020, was forced to go the virtual route because of COVID-19 with the IBC Showcase taking place Sept. 8-11. Part of the draw of IBC is hearing about the latest tech and products from new companies, but just because they aren’t happening in person, doesn’t mean companies aren’t eager to share their latest news.

Here is a rundown of IBC-related press conferences scheduled to take place before and during the IBC Virtual Showcase.

Pebble Beach Systems

Building Resilience into your Playout Operations
Sept. 9 at 4:30 p.m. BST (11:30 AM, ET)

The kickoff of a series of webinars throughout September and beyond looking at how the industry has responded to the challenges of 2020 and the role the company can play in helping broadcasters survive and thrive.

Pebble Deep Dive Workshops
Sept. 10-16

Pebble Beach Systems will make its experts available to answer questions during a series of workshops tailored to the interest of attendees.

Registration for the former webinar is available online; and an online calendar where a reservation can be made for the latter is available on the company’s website.

IABM Future Trends Channel
Through September

Starting on Sept. 1, IABM is hosting the Future Trends Channel, which will offer a weekly live event on Tuesdays on different themes, including cloud & virtualizations, AI/ML & analytics, imaging & immersive, streaming content & platform and future media economies. For more information, visit IABM’s website.

ATTO Technology IBC Showcase 2020
Sept. 8-11

ATTO will unveil new features and updates to the ATTO 360 Tuning software, as well as video demonstrations of the ATTO FastFrame and Celerity platforms. For more information, visit ATTO's website. 

Elements Remote Week 2020
Sept. 8-11

Elements will host a series of web sessions where it will showcase its new remote editing tool Elements Satellite and its latest innovations in media storage workflows. For more information, visit Element's website.

IPV's "Locked Down but Not Out: Creating Video Remotely"
Sept. 8-11

IPV will host industry leaders from Sky, "Sesame Street," HBO and WarnerMedia over four sessions to answer questions about collaborative content creation in the age of remote workflows. For more information, visit the IPV website. 

Bitmovin Live: IBC Edition 2020
Sept. 9-24

Bitmovin is hosting a virtual experience that includes video tech webinars, case study discussions, developer learning labs, demos and partners presentations on topics like costs of video distribution, app development and optimizing video workflows. For more information, visit Bitmovin's website.

Harmonic Live Connection IBC 2020 Edition
Sept. 10

Harmonic's virtual showcase will include a series of webinars hosted by industry-leading experts, a virtual showroom with new innovations and insights on video streaming and delivery, and one-on-one meetings with Harmonic team members. Register here.

Primestream Virtual IBC Event
Sept. 10

Primestream will have four virtual "rooms" that each highlight a smart workflow for a different type of user, including news production, media and entertainment, live events and content creators. Register here.

“Zixi Delivers” Virtual Showcase
Sept. 14-18

This multi-day event will present enhancements to Zixi’s SDVP for delivery of live video over IP via webinars, presentations and virtual customer and partner meetings. For more information, visit Zixi’s website. 

Verizon Media's "OTT Trends & Solutions" Webinar
Sept. 22, 11 a.m. ET

Verizon takes a deep dive into OTT trends that are reshaping the industry and how you can keep pace and use new technology. Register here.

WALTHAM, Mass.—Zixi and Harmonic have teamed up on an integration of Zixi technology with Harmonic’s cloud-based VOS 360 live streaming platform.

The VOS 360 platform is designed to help content creators and service providers launch streaming channels. To help secure the content in transit through its delivery chain, VOS 360’s cloud infrastructure has integrated Zixi’s Software-Defined Video Platform (SDVP), which can receive live video from Harmonic CloudLink, third-party devices and software with embedded Zixi, as well as from customers with deployed Zixi Broadcasters. The joint system can create end-to-end workflows at all stages of the media processing and delivery chain, per Zixi.

With the Zixi integration, VOS 360 will enable content contributors and distributors to scale their video transport to outlets around the world and provide ultra low-latency video.

SDVP uses advanced technologies, network bonding, congestion avoidance and hitless failover to create a coherent stream out of multiple stream fragments using a DNA sequence alignment algorithm.

“Our partnership with Zixi allows us to further enhance our innovative streaming solutions that address the challenges our mutual customers are facing,” said Shahar Bar, senior vice president, Video Products and Corporate Development at Harmonic.

Harmonic and Zixi will demonstrate the integrated technology during a webcast on July 22 at 11 a.m. ET. Registration is available online. 

For more information, visit www.zixi.com.