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ViewCast Powers Live Streaming of 2008 MTV Europe Music Awards
Internet-Based Broadcast Reaches Millions Worldwide
PLANO, Texas — Nov. 20, 2008 — ViewCast Corporation (OTCBB: VCST), a developer of industry-leading hardware and software for the transformation and delivery of professional-quality video over IP and mobile networks, today announced that its Niagara Pro media encoder streamed the 2008 MTV Europe Music Awards live over the Web to millions of viewers globally.
Supplied by Garland Partners Ltd (GPL) of the U.K., the Niagara Pro allowed fans to watch the 15th annual awards show, hosted Nov. 6 at Liverpool's Echo Arena, on their computers and mobile devices. Celebrity blogger Perez Hilton hosted the show's live Webcast, bringing red carpet interviews with the stars and backstage reports to MTV's multi-platform offering. An estimated 30 million viewers from more than 40 European countries, plus China, India, and beyond, tuned in to this year's award show.
"Every year something sensational happens at this awards show, and we wanted to ensure our audience could feel that they were part of the action as it occurred," said Alec Hendry, director of Digital Media Operations & Development at MTV Networks Europe. "Last year, after we asked GPL to assist us in implementing a Web streaming solution for the event, we had 3.2 million video streams and a 35 percent increase over the previous year on unique visitors to our Web site. GPL had suggested we use the Niagara Pro, which was so reliable and easy-to-use that we immediately knew that would be our choice again this year."
At the 2008 MTV Europe Music Awards, GPL worked with ViewCast to assist MTV in covering the show's dynamic performances and award presentations with two Niagara Pro units. Throughout the evening, the Niagara Pro media encoders provided professional-quality live streaming of Adobe® Flash® and Windows Media® Player 9 content, which in turn were delivered to Akamai for live streaming on www.mtvema.com
"The MTV Europe Music Awards has been an exceedingly popular television event, and fans around the globe have quickly embraced the opportunity to view it live on their computers and handheld devices via live streaming technology," said ViewCast President and CEO Dave Stoner. "We're pleased that for the past two years Niagara Pro encoders have enabled global audiences to not only watch the live, star-studded event in real time, but to interact with the MTV Europe Web site and vote for the awards."
Stoner added, "Streaming of an increasing number of high-profile events, such as the MTV awards, reflects the growing use of this digital medium not only to reach huge audiences but also to generate advertising revenue for broadcasters and content owners. And, because of the high-performance needs of this segment of the digital media industry, our professional-grade Niagara encoders are becoming more widely adopted into their communications networks as a cost-effective enabling technology."
The Niagara Pro dual-channel encoder is a professional rack-mountable streaming media appliance capable of delivering two channels of full D1 high-quality streaming video. ViewCast's SimulStream technology enables simultaneous streaming of multiple resolutions at multiple data rates in multiple streaming formats. The Niagara Pro's three preprogrammable "A-B-C" buttons allow users to execute predefined encoding profiles simply by pressing a single button on the encoder's front panel.
More information about ViewCast video streaming solutions is available at www.viewcast.com
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