Envivio Announces Updates to Muse Encoding and Halo Network Media Processing Products

Envivio (News - Alert) (ENVI), a provider of software-based live and on-demand multi-screen video processing solutions, has announced several forthcoming updates to its Envivio Muse encoding and Envivio Halo network media processing software products.

Boris Felts, vice president of product marketing at Envivio, said that the company’s unique software-based product strategy enables operators to implement an infrastructure that can easily be upgraded to support the newest advances and technologies for video processing and delivery to any screen.

“These latest enhancements to our software portfolio offer a range of new capabilities and improvements for TV without boundaries,” Felts said.

The company has developed the new software licensing options with the objective to improve quality, enable personalization of the user experience and facilitate service monetization. Company officials said that products and solutions of the company can be installed at the headend or IT datacenter for cloud-based video processing.

Envivio Muse encoding solution, Envivio Muse Live, will now be available on the Cisco (News - Alert) UCS blade server platform and also the HP BladeSystem and Envivio 4Caster G4 Intel-based appliance.

Company officials said that the integration of CPU strengths of these platforms with the additional software improvements increases channel density. In addition to supporting up to 120 SD channels in the 2RU 4Caster G4 platform, Muse Live is also designed to support up to 16 HD channels in MPEG-2 or AVC in the future.

The integrated video quality monitoring is expected to ensure that Envivio Muse On-Demand offers better control of video quality. Company officials said that the integrated module computes the impact of video compression on a frame-by-frame basis. Moreover, it provides a summary chart, enabling the operator to fine tune compression parameters or automatically reject content that does not meet quality metrics.

Additionally, latest versions of Envivio Muse will support Dolby Digital Plus in all formats for live and on-demand applications. Company officials said that this will provide the benefit of pristine surround sound at lower bitrates on any screen.

The company has also said that the Envivio Halo network media processor is being updated with a number of improvements. These include just-in-time packaging for non-linear workflows; support for Adobe (News - Alert) Primetime, the Adobe HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) format and Adobe Primetime DRM.

Additional enhancements include Ad insertion blackout functionalities that are compatible with CableLabs (News - Alert) ESAM standards; and support for additional encryption modes such as Microsoft PlayReady.

With the help of Halo, operators can further monetize multi-screen applications with its dynamic ad insertion capabilities as well as the new personalization capabilities, according to company officials.

The company intends to make Halo available on the latest generation Envivio 4Caster G4 platform or as software for IT datacenter environments.

The company also announced that Envivio Spark offers a complete solution for TV delivery across all networks by combining with Muse encoders, Halo network media processor and Envivio 4Manager network management system.

A universal gateway and multiplexer, Envivio Spark allows operators to deploy an end-to-end broadcast TV headend for cable and satellite applications.