Journey Addresses IP-based Transmission Needs of Sports Video Clients

The Sports Video Group is pleased to welcome Journey as a corporate sponsor. As the sports industry increasingly moves toward IP-based transmission systems, it has been a persistent challenge to find reliable, high quality, easily deployable solutions. Journey is a managed service that offers a zero capex answer to this dilemma. The company offers an IP video transport platform that intelligently combines innovative technology with advanced network management to provide an unparalleled level of delivery performance.

“In the ever-evolving world of sports video technology, we’re proud to offer Journey as the next generation in IP-based transmission,” says Journey’s President and CEO David Walzer. “The Sports Video Group represents the best of the industry, and we’re honored to participate on a sponsorship level with SVG and its members.”

A key component of the platform is the versatile Journey Transport appliance. Available in both single-channel and four-channel versions, the function of the appliance is literally rewritten by the platform with every booking, whether it’s an encoder/transmitter, receiver/decoder, or network transponder. The appliances are designed for easy deployment, requiring no special port configurations or other special firewall rules.

Journey’s transport latency is as low as 250 ms, depending on network conditions. Multiple video channels are delivered in frame-accurate synchronization, even across appliances, making Journey perfect for at-home production applications. Journey’s dynamic set of advanced error correction and data recovery protocols assures high-quality, seamless transmission.

Despite Journey’s leading-edge technology, the internet remains a highly unpredictable transmission medium. To address this, all Journey transmissions are actively monitored by engineers in Journey’s 24/7 Network Operations Center, who can spot and rectify potential issues at the IP transport level before they become a problem.

Journey provides an ideal answer to those transmission situations where fiber, satellite, and other traditional methods are too costly or impractical. The Journey platform is colocated at leading fiber hubs and offers easy interconnectivity to fiber, satellite, global connections, and more. Common use cases in sports include contribution/backhaul feeds, centralcasting, at-home production, and backup/redundancy, among others.

The Lax Sports Network (LSN), an OTT network launched in 2016 dedicated to the game of lacrosse, provides extensive live coverage of Major League Lacrosse, CAA lacrosse, special events, and more. LSN employs Journey extensively for both contribution and at-home production feeds for hundreds of events annually. Journey’s ease of deployment, reliable transmission, and high-touch customer service are key features for LSN.

“Overnight, I now don’t have sleepless nights about our stream. Those days are gone,” says LSN’s COO Rob Wallace. “In the competitive space of the OTT world, I would put up Journey against any other product that’s out there.”