NAB 2018: Harmonic To Unveil Low-Latency UHD HDR OTT Live Sports Workflow

At NAB 2018, Harmonic will showcase its new end-to-end UHD HDR solution for live sports streaming. The solution features Harmonic’s ViBE CP9000 contribution encoder for ingest into the cloud and VOS 360 media processing SaaS for encoding, packaging, origin server capabilities and OTT distribution. Using the new solution, broadcasters, content owners and service providers can deliver live sports content to any screen with superior quality of experience (QoE), low latency and significant cost savings.
“UHD HDR is perfect for live sports content because it gives viewers a taste of the action in stunning clarity and detail. However, the challenge is delivering that content for OTT with latency comparable to broadcast,” says Tim Warren, senior VP and chief technology officer, video business at Harmonic. “Harmonic’s unique end-to-end workflow for UHD HDR live streaming offers full support for innovative technologies like cloud, content-aware encoding and the new CMAF standard, enabling a 5- to 6-second end-to-end latency compared with the industry norm of 30 to 35 seconds. We look forward to empowering broadcasters, content owners and service providers as they champion better live sports experiences while boosting business agility.”

Harmonic’s VOS 360 solution offers several key features such as UHD HDR encoding via the next-gen PURE Compression Engine; EyeQ content-aware encoding for HEVC; and UHD live content, packaging and low latency comparable to live broadcast based on compliance with the CMAF specification. By enabling users to leverage the agility, flexibility and scalability of the cloud, VOS 360 SaaS speeds up the launch of new sports channels while minimizing capital and operational expenses.