Bridge Technologies has launched PocketProbe, an iPhone app that enables objective analysis of real network performance of streaming media from a portable device.
PocketProbe extends both the existing capabilities of digital media monitoring systems built from Bridge Technologies hardware probes, and the monitoring software environment. PocketProbe contains the same OTT Engine found in the company’s VB1, VB2 and 10G VB3 series digital media monitoring probes, enabling confidence validation and analysis of http variable bit-rate streams from any location.
PocketProbe is available in two versions – the free application version can validate five HLS streams in round-robin mode, provide analysis and manifest consistency alarms, play back media in the various profile bit-rates, and graphically display the actual chunk download patterns and bit-rates. The full version adds the ability to validate HDS and SmoothStream manifest files and store 25 streams with all profiles.
‘This is monitoring-anywhere for the TV-anywhere age,’ says Bridge Technologies Chairman, Simen Frostad. ‘True efficiency in digital media monitoring comes from being able to analyse every point in the network, at any time, without having to be at a specific location. Armed with a tool like PocketProbe, technical personnel can check on service errors, no matter where they are, and get instant analysis of the cause.’
PocketProbe is easy to use, with a fully automatic set-up: once the stream URL is input, the app finds all related profiles and validates the consistency.
Since the PocketProbe uses the same metric as the company’s the hardware probes, PocketProbe can be used by service engineers and operational staff to test real-world behaviors post-cloud with various operators. Accurate status of bit-rates used and profile changes is displayed in real time, giving instant understanding of provider delivery capability. Together with hardware probes used pre-cloud, the post-cloud location of the PocketProbe enables excellent correlative understanding of CDN and provider abilities.
PocketProbe is available now from Apple’s App Store.
More: www.bridgetech.tv
