Sports Technology & Communications News from Around the World

Digital Rapids (News - Alert) claimed that its encoding solutions helped Austria-based unas media productions to stream high-quality live feeds of the Australian Open tennis matches to the tournament’s official websites, mobile devices and online betting providers.

The tournament’s live feeds were available over the internet via ‘Australian Open TV’ and on iOS devices from Melbourne, Australia. To facilitate this live streaming, unas media is said to have employed five dual-channel, high-definition Digital Rapids encoders that are designed to offer superior quality, multi-screen output format support for live and on-demand streaming applications.

Digital Rapid explained that its encoders feature rich output capabilities that are ideal for capitalizing on today’s lucrative multi-screen content distribution opportunities. Its encoders are the most versatile HD content creation and repurposing tools, letting users to capture, encode, transcode, stream and deliver their content in multiple formats ranging from uncompressed HD video to high-quality streaming media, all from a single, intuitive interface.

The encoders’ ability to deliver simultaneous outputs to multiple formats, resolutions and bitrates provides users with the provision to optimize delivery for each target audience or application. Broadcasters cannot afford to make mistakes while telecasting live and for that Digital Rapids’ encoders utilize Flux capture and preprocessing hardware for robust handling of irregularities or disruptions in incoming SDI or analog source video signals.

“Today’s viewers have high expectations for the quality and multi-screen availability of live streams of major sporting events, and media organizations worldwide trust our solutions to exceed these expectations while providing the reliability required for on-location live coverage. We’re very pleased that unas media productions chose our solutions for this event, and we look forward to continuing to work with them on future projects,” said Clive Vickery, managing director for EMEA and Asia at Digital Rapids.

unas media added that Digital Rapids encoders’ ability to run the many profiles per input channel that it needed for simultaneous Web and Apple (News - Alert) iOS streaming, all without straining CPU usage, was a key factor in choosing them for this project. And as the production company also uses Digital Rapids solutions at its headquarters, it was well aware of the quality they could provide, and confident they would perform well on-site.

In other news, Digital Rapids recently announced that it has joined the Akamai (News - Alert) NetAlliance Solution Partner Program.

Akamai has expanded its partner program to encompass the digital media ecosystem through the NetAlliance Solution Partner Program, with Digital Rapids joining as one of the new expansion's inaugural members.