Solutions provider NativeWaves and media network solutions specialist Net Insight have announced a sales and technology partnership that is expected to bring ‘significant benefits’ to broadcast and streaming companies.
The partnership will see NativeWaves deploy Net Insight’s Nimbra Edge cloud solution with its NativeWaves EXP experience. This new platform, launched in 2021, enhances the standard broadcast and streaming experience by giving audiences the opportunity to explore a wealth of additional content such as different camera angles, audio tracks, instant replays, and social media integration.
‘Going forward, all NativeWaves EXP customers will receive their services via Nimbra Edge,’ says NativeWaves CEO, Christof Haslauer. ‘Net Insight’s solutions are not only stable, reliable and technically sound, but they also come with the backing of tremendous support. This goes a long way towards helping us service our customers so that they can deliver next-level a NativeWaves EXP experience to their own customers.’
The partnership came about as a direct result of an IBC Accelerator project that took place in 2021. Both companies were part of a multi-company team examining the onset, rollout and continuing evolution of 5G for remote production and live sport. The project’s aim was to show how 5G could be used to create a unique fan experience in a stadium and at home using multiple camera sources from traditional broadcast cameras, AI cameras, drones and mobile phones. The events chosen to test 5G workflows and technology were two concurrent soccer matches – one for the Arab Cup and one for a youth league - which took place in Qatar in December 2021. These were selected by the IBC Accelerator team because their location made them the ideal testing ground for technology that might be used at sporting events such as the FIFA World Cup later this year.
‘While working with Net Insight, we discovered that Nimbra Edge made it very easy to route different production input streams into the NativeWaves platform, which is something we require to deliver our Multiview experience,’ Haslauer says. ‘Nimbra Edge also enables us to feed synchronized production inputs to our encoder, and easily manage all partner feeds from multiple sources, which reduces project and operations overheads.’
The fact that Nimbra Edge supports low latency streaming and is cloud-based were also attractive features for NativeWaves, which uses a dedicated low-latency streaming platform to power its NativeWaves EXP experience.
‘NativeWaves EXP is a perfect example of advanced media services that can benefit from utilizing the ease of use of and quality of Nimbra Edge,’ says Kristian Mets, Head of Sales Business Development at Net Insight. ‘The solution offers state of the art latency and stream synchronization for an extraordinary end-user experience.’
