Nativ, Dolby partner for on-demand advanced audio

London-based content services company Nativ and Dolby Laboratories have partnered to provide Dolby encoding and audio analysis for any platform or device using Nativ’s newly launched Mio On Demand service. Demonstrated at IBC2011 in Amsterdam, this new solution allows content owners to encode in Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby Pulse, and to utilize a range of advanced analysis tools to provide the highest quality audio-visual experience for multiscreen TV.

Dolby Media Generator, a professional preprocessing and encoding tool, has been integrated to enable a greater number of content owners to access its advanced audio technologies as well as all the benefits of Nativ’s Mio Everywhere platform, without the capital expenditure. Mio On Demand is based in a secure “private cloud” and allows users to scale up or down as required as usage costs vary according to the volume of ingested, stored, repurposed and distributed content.

“People’s entertainment habits are changing,” Jon Folland, Nativ CEO said. “It’s becoming common for someone to watch a movie on their mobile on the go and then dock it when they get home to continue watching on their TV.

“As this becomes more commonplace audiences are demanding that content retains its quality no matter what device it’s being watched on. It has been proven that audio is a key indicator of quality and this partnership with Dolby will enable Nativ’s customers to offer the best quality across all platforms quickly and cost-effectively.”

Mio On Demand, based on Nativ’s signature Mio Everywhere media management platform, is a video and audio logistics solution designed to help content owners exploit every channel and device available. The private cloud-based solution represents an entirely new way of accessing the Mio platform. Mio On Demand gives broadcasters, post houses, production companies and brands the opportunity to reap all of the benefits of Nativ’s Mio Everywhere platform.

Benefits of the Mio On Demand platform are centered around its private cloud structure, which eliminates the need for hardware investment. Users benefit from the transactional delivery model, paying only for the media they use, with easily scalable, as-needed access to Nativ’s secure data centers. Quality is assured through full access to Dolby encoding and multi-channel audio technologies across any delivery platform.

Jonathan Jowitt, senior manager for content provider services at Dolby Laboratories, summed up the benefits of the partnership with Nativ.

“With television and movies becoming more easily available on mobiles, PCs and tablets, content owners need to be able to provide the greatest quality experience across all of these devices,” Jowitt said. “With Mio On Demand, there is now a cost effective way of making Dolby Digital Plus available to as many content owners as possible on a transactional basis.

“For clients seeking a solution to do all the encoding and delivery, Mio On demand can now offer an end to end solution to help meet their needs.”