Envivio introduces the world’s first reconfigurable multichannel and multiplatform IP video encoding architecture for IPTV, Internet TV and mobile TV services. The Trans4M architecture enables a service provider to reconfigure the Envivio Trans4M-based encoders to generate video streams supporting the “3 screens” of video – TVs, PCs and mobile devices.

The Trans4M architecture provides the ability to reconfigure an encoder in real time to easily add new features and functions without the need to replace units deployed in the field. Trans4M-based encoders give service providers more choices and flexibility with respect to the services they can offer and the screen types that they can reach. The first Envivio encoder to utilize this revolutionary new Trans4M architecture is the 4Caster C4 IP video encoder supporting both IPTV and Internet TV in its initial implementation.

“This is an entirely unique architecture that only Envivio encoders can provide,” exclaimed Julien Signès, President and CEO of Envivio. “Service providers want to offer IP video to many different devices while keeping costs and risks down and our Trans4M technology makes this possible. For example, a service provider using the C4 with the Trans4M architecture can have all four ingest channels targeting standard definition IPTV set-top boxes or a mixture of set-top boxes and PCs for Internet TV.”

“Even more incredible, a service provider can decide to change their mix of targeted devices at any time and reconfigure the C4 after it has been put on-line to offer channels and capacity to the most popular video devices,” added Jean-Pierre Henot, CTO of Envivio.

By enabling mobile TV, IPTV and Internet TV services from the same Trans4M-based encoder, a service provider will only need to invest in one headend rather than three, and only one redundancy system and one management system, resulting in significant capex and opex savings. Using one encoding platform to provide these three services also reduces the risk to a service provider with respect to interoperability and compatibility of devices tied to these services. For those service providers intending to offer only one or two of the services enabled by the architecture, the Trans4M-based encoders give them the flexibility to add another service at a later date by simply expanding their existing headend or reconfiguring their existing Trans4M-based encoders.

Currently, the 4Caster C4 IP video encoder allows service providers to offer both IPTV and Internet TV from the same encoder. However, the unique and flexible Trans4M architecture of the 4Caster C4 encoder will ultimately bring together the Envivio video compression expertise and industry leading video quality to offer a multichannel and multiplatform encoder capable of addressing the three screens supported by mobile TV, Internet TV, and IPTV at extremely low bandwidths over any network.