One of the companies at Disrupt SF 2011 that escaped the horror of presenting on stage was Network Optix, whose impressive video handling technology was a little too practical for presentation. They’ve been busy the last few months in improving their product and forging business relationships, and have just announced that they’ve raised $750K with which to continue development.
Their product is what they call Enterprise Video as a Service, and is designed around the idea of handling all the complex transcoding and bandwidth issues associated with viewing and manipulating video on different platforms.
The delivery of rich, interactive, high-definition video is the focus of their technology, which allows (for instance) for several video streams to play at once in the same meta-stream, so you could video-chat while interacting with another HD video or presenting slides. It’s very unstructured yet more versatile than simple screen-sharing.
The system is demonstrated in their EVE Media Player, which at the moment is necessary for the various applications they suggest for their tech. Essentially it relocates the most processor-heavy aspects of HD video (running several at a time, switching between dozens of simultaneous streams) and converts that to a bandwidth requirement that is more easily met by less capable systems. In a way it’s comparable to OnLive’s method, though I think they would slightly resent the comparison, as their system is much more flexible on the user side.
If it’s not entirely clear what Network Optix does, exactly, watch a few of their demo videos and all will become clear.