Phenix, Garland join forces to tackle lagging video streams
March 12, 2018
Phenix, a global, end-to-end real-time IP video solution provider, has joined forces with Garland, Europe’s leading digital video solutions provider. This alliance will allow Garland to provide customers in the UK and Ireland with Phenix’s solutions designed to significantly reduce the lag experienced when streaming live video.
Imagine being glued to your seat watching the World Cup final on your tablet or smart phone. The decisive moment is fast approaching. Suddenly you hear your neighbours roar with excitement. A bit later, you see on your screen what they have already experienced…the winning goal.
“One of the biggest problems facing those streaming live video is the lag faced by viewers,” says Jed Corenthal, Chief Marketing Officer for Phenix. “Technically, that lag time is known as latency, and it’s made worse when a lot of people are watching an event online and when internet connections are poor. This can lead to many seconds or even minutes of delay. According to recent research, latency is the major culprit behind why 40 per cent of US sports fans surveyed said they don’t plan to view live streams at all in 2018.”
Phenix put to work their decades of video streaming engineering expertise and developed its platform from the ground-up to support a real-time streaming solution that can deliver both speed and scale, not simply one or the other. Phenix’s technology drives viewer engagement by providing high-quality video with less than half a second of end-to-end latency. The result: an unlimited number of concurrent users can experience the same event streamed live and in sync without adding latency.
The technology’s networking protocols optimise for smooth video experiences on all connections ranging from broadband and fibre to 3G and 4G mobile networks. The Phenix team spent nearly two decades researching live streaming and peer-to-peer video streaming algorithms to create the world’s leading real-time video streaming platform.
“One of our newest features, which will be available to our clients later in 2018, is something we call peer-assisted delivery. The technology works like a GPS system for drivers trying to find the fastest way through a maze of traffic,” explains Corenthal. “The algorithms find the fastest way around internet congestion. The content will never be delivered just through peers, it will always be split between servers and peers, which will further enhance the quality of the video.”
“An added benefit is that by grouping people together, our customers can decrease their operating bandwidth costs by up to 80 per cent,” says Lorna Garrett, Commercial Director at Garland. “Phenix is built for industries where lag time isn’t an option, including: sports, social media, news, webinars, gaming, auctions, and more. Making it available to our customers in the UK and Ireland is our priority.”
“We’re pleased to be joining forces with Garland,” says Corenthal. “As the leading provider of digital video solutions in Europe, Garland have the expertise to take this solution to those who’ve been searching for something of this magnitude. Consumers everywhere want to watch content as it happens, and they don’t want that experience spoiled in any way. We’ve found a way to put the true meaning into ‘real-time’ video.”