Adaptive Bitrate gets more Cacheable with SeaWell Networks Spectrum

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At NAB today, SeaWell Networks (http://www.seawellnetworks.com/) launched their Spectrum solution – a streaming media solution that repackages adaptive bitrate content from one format to another. In our recent Encoding and Transcoding report (http://www.abiresearch.com/research/1003156), we stated: “Some strides are being taken to move encapsulation to the edge of the network. In October 2010, Envivio announced its Genesis architecture in which the Network Media Processors (edge processors), located inside the CDNs (Content Delivery Network), handle packaging and encryption.” Seawell’s product is another solving this problem. In a recent call, they described the capabilities of the solution including dynamically generating manifests or playlists, and modifying packet size.

SeaWell Networks’ previous product – Lumen – is the first example of an encoder supporting H.264 SVC we’ve seen targeted for use outside of the teleconferencing environment, where SVC has gained some leverage. SeaWell wisely saw that mandating SVC adoption for their repackager would limit its adoption – so they’ve tried to adopt a more from any-protocol to any-protocol – which is possible because H.264 underlays all of the approaches.
SeaWell Network’s innovations in their Spectrum products should allow ISPs and video providers to make better use of cached video data within their content delivery networks (CDNs) by decreasing the impact caused by fragmentation of platforms and protocols including Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe Smooth Streaming and Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming.
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