HockeyTech broadens utilisation of Zixi SDVP
September 28, 2021
Zixi, an industry player for enabling dependable, live broadcast-quality video over any IP, and award-winning architect of the Software-Defined Video Platform (SDVP), has announced that HockeyTech, a specialist in providing hockey streaming services, information and analytics, has expanded its usage of the SDVP for live, high quality contribution from venues to the cloud for reliable delivery to the HockeyTV streaming platform.
Founded in 2013, HockeyTech is a global leader providing hockey-related technologies, analytics, and information services, on-demand streaming services, live scoring and statistics, full-featured league websites & mobile apps, and a fully automated camera technology. Customers include teams, leagues and organizations, and rely on HockeyTech’s cloud-based system for all of their technology needs.
Fans can access live and on-demand streaming of elite hockey broadcasts through HockeyTV, the world’s largest channel for elite hockey streams. Streaming from nearly 1000 rinks across the United States and Canada alone, HockeyTV is partnered with over 75 prominent leagues to stream tens of thousands of games per year, and offers over 130,000 games to watch on-demand. This allows HockeyTech to aggregate hundreds of thousands of live streams and analytics content while providing the highest level of live and on-demand video content to its viewers.
With such an extensive geographical reach, HockeyTech was having difficulty getting high quality content out of hockey rinks, particularly in remote locations where traditional service is inconsistent. It needed a way to provide the level of broadcast-quality content customers expected, regardless of contribution location. HockeyTech wanted a solution that would lessen the strain on operational teams dealing with quality or signal loss challenges, lower their support burden, and ultimately increase customer satisfaction by maintaining consistent, ultra-low latency streaming while providing visibility of delivery to endpoints across its complex distribution ecosystem.
To overcome these challenges, HockeyTech chose the SDVP to rapidly implement a turnkey solution for high quality contribution. The SDVP provides reliable, broadcast-quality delivery over any IP network with the award-winning Zixi protocol, resilient congestion and network-aware software that adjusts to varying network conditions and employs patented, dynamic Forward Error Correction techniques for error-free video transport over IP with 99.999% uptime at minimal latency. It provides best-in-class security with DTLS and AES encryption, allows for protected multicast transport, bandwidth efficiency and enables encoder backpressure. To orchestrate, monitor and manage live streams from any location, HockeyTech uses Zixi’s ZEN Master control plane to ensure quality of delivery at scale, while also providing significant time and cost savings for operational and support teams with a robust suite of analytics and reporting.
The transition to Zixi was not only seamless but also provided immediate cost savings, allowing HockeyTech to leverage IP networks for reliable, low latency streaming of high-value content from a variety of venue locations securely into the cloud. With Zixi’s “first-mile” ingest, HockeyTech can consistently deliver broadcast-quality content without signal degradation from any venue with a solution that lessens the burden on operations by ensuring reliable performance, ease of management and an improved customer experience.
“Like the players out on the ice, hockey technology moves very rapidly. With HockeyTV, we made it our mission to ensure our users can see and understand the game with access to high quality live video” said Stewart Zimmel Siegel, President of HockeyTech. “With a large number of live streamed events where connectivity can be a challenge, our internal teams rely on the unmatched utility of Zixi’s SDVP to efficiently ensure a consistent, quality experience for our customers around the world.”
“Zixi has spent over 15 years perfecting live broadcast quality contribution and delivery over IP, making it easy to acquire, command and control streams for wide scale contribution and distribution” said Brandon Cooney, Director of Sales, Zixi. “We are very proud to help HockeyTech overcome challenging contribution restrictions and ensure the delivery of its mission critical streams around the world, with the quality of service and quality of experience its customers demand.”
Zixi will showcasing the latest features and functionality of the SDVP during the two-week Zixi Innovates NAB replacement event. Please click here – Zixi Innovates Fall Showcase 2021 – to see the events or to schedule a meeting with the Zixi Executive team or regional sales representative.