Cross Media Ventures Taps Inlet for Wimbledon Streaming

Cross
Media Ventures, a streaming-media specialist based in The Netherlands, is using Inlet’s Spinnaker encoding to stream the 2008 Wimbledon
tennis championships and A1GP Motor Races, among other events.
Cross
Media recently produced and managed 10 live streams from the Wimbledon tennis
championships over the Netherlands’
NET5 station Website using the Microsoft Silverlight platform. Viewers can
also watch the Wimbledon matches on-demand
through the NET5 portal.
“One of
the key criteria we used when selecting Inlet’s Spinnaker was its ability to
encode the highest-quality live streams with exceptional color representation,”
says Raymond Garnier, managing director of Cross Media Ventures. “There are
certain nuances with regards to game play and live sports action that make it
especially important to maintain the best-quality stream for our viewers.”
The
sports industry is one of the fastest-growing segments for streaming live
content on the Web. Online sports video streams/downloads served in the U.S. market are
projected to increase from 5.2 billion in 2007 to 10.8 billion by 2012. A
StrategyOne study sponsored by Motorola revealed that nearly half of Europe is currently watching TV on the Internet.
“Online
video users seek out content that speaks to their passions and demand a level
of quality that matches their enthusiasm,” says Neal Page, CEO of Inlet
Technologies.“Inlet is pleased to work with Cross Media Ventures to bring
excellence to live streaming video.”