Sports Technology & Communications News from Around the World

Inlet Technologies (News - Alert), a provider of solutions for digital media preparation, unveiled that its Spinnaker family of encoding solutions are chosen by deltatre, a sports media services company headquartered in Torino, Italy, to generate broadcast-quality streaming outputs of some of the most prominent and high-profile events in the sports world.

"At deltatre we aim to provide our customers with the highest possible quality of products and services. To do that, we invest heavily in the development of our own solutions, and seek out the leading specialists when we need to bring in third parties. Inlet is indeed a leading specialist in its field with terrific products that really get the job done," Ciaran Quinn, director at deltatre said.

"Inlet Technologies is a great partner for us as we share the same values of excellence, innovation and quality of experience," Quinn added.

Spinnaker is Inlet Technologies’ family of streaming appliances for live video and audio delivery applications. Using a state-of-the-art encoding engine and an advanced toolset, Spinnaker has been delivering the bandwidth performance and unique features allowing customers to offer a true broadcast experience on the web.

deltatre official clarified that the company has been working with global television broadcasters and sports federations in the areas of web, results, graphics and video. Earlier, the company had associated with Inlet's Spinnaker for the highly-successful online broadcast of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games. On the heels of this experience, deltatre decided to replace legacy encoders with Spinnakers for use with world-leading sports properties starting in June 2010.

In addition to supporting adaptive bitrate, Spinnaker is believed to have enabled deltatre to deliver a true broadcast experience for viewers on the web or any mobile device, all from a single Spinnaker appliance. Spinnaker had also easily integrated into deltatre’s existing content management system and infrastructure.

"Inlet Technologies and deltatre have the expertise to turn these potential technical and marketing challenges into monetization opportunities for their clients," Michael Barros, senior vice president, sales and marketing, Inlet Technologies said.

"We're enabling content owners to bring an unprecedented live sports experience to fans around the world while also recognizing revenue from live streams," Barros added.

Inlet had also announced that British broadcaster BBC is using Spinnaker to power its simulcast expansion plans as well as live sporting events, including the recent FIFA World Cup 2010, Wimbledon, and F1 Grand Prix. Australia's ABC News 24 digital news service also has used Spinnaker for online and mobile live streaming.