HaiVision Systems Inc., vendor of high-performance H.264 HD and SD video codecs, and Zixi LLC, supplier of HD Instant Video Delivery Network (IVDN) products, has announced the first successful broadcast of live HD video over the public Internet.

The broadcasts were transmitted from the Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) in New York City to remote studio facilities in the United States and simultaneously to several other sites worldwide, where viewers accessed video using either a Web browser or an Internet-enabled set-top box. The real-time HD broadcasts were transmitted over the Internet using Zixi's IVDN platform to recover and reorder lost packets in real time providing instant start, continuous delivery of video to studio, set-top boxes, and PCs without any sacrifice in video quality.

The HD (1080i) feeds were transmitted between the CUMC and convention centres using HaiVision's ultra-low-latency MAKO-HD H.264 HD codecs. At other locations worldwide, audiences simultaneously viewed the transmission using software decoders on standard PCs. The Internet services at both ends were standard general-purpose ISP connections, with the stream serviced by the Zixi IVDN platform. In a side-by-side comparison at the receiving studio, the video quality delivered over the Zixi IVDN was indistinguishable from the signal received via satellite and dedicated fiber connections.

"The Zixi platform is revolutionising public Internet-based network video communications," said Peter Maag, HaiVision vice president. "Now, through the combination of Zixi's IVDN and our MAKO-HD codec, the transport of HD video over the Internet requires only adequate first- and last-mile bandwidth."

The broadcast used Zixi's IVDN platform at the source and receiving ends to groom the data traffic, recover lost packets, and eliminate jitter. The latency from source to destination - including the MAKO-HD's 70 ms of encode and decode - was under 500 milliseconds, and the transmission exhibited no re-buffering pauses. The Zixi IVDN and HaiVision MAKO-HD demonstrated the robustness of the transmission by continuously streaming video despite as much as 25% packet loss on the connection.

"HaiVision's MAKO-HD H.264 codec is the premier HD appliance available for medical, telepresence, and broadcast-style applications," said Israel Drori, Zixi's CEO and founder. "The MAKO-HD's performance was outstanding."

The Zixi broadcast from CUMC was supported by the MAKO-HD's 6-Mbps H.264 stream and delivered pristine full-motion 1080i video to multiple global locations over the public Internet. The MAKO-HD, which supports up to 1080p30 HD resolution and up to 1280x768 computer resolution at 60 frames per second, contributed only 70 milliseconds of delay to the entire transmission.

www.zixi.com

www.haivision.com