• MediaKind managed, coordinated and processed world’s first multi-channel 6K tiled 360-degree live stream during basketball match in Germany in December 2018
• Innovative and efficient use of state-of-the-art public cloud deployment for live 360-degree video processing enabled event based delivery to consumers
• Demonstrations of MediaKind’s 360-degree immersive live sports experience available to visitors at its NAB Show booth (#SU720)

Today at NAB Show 2019, MediaKind continues to lead in delivering live immersive consumer media experiences by winning the prestigious ‘NAB Technology Innovation Award’ for ‘Enabling 6K tiled 360-degree live sports streaming’. MediaKind developed the 360-degree live encoding workflow incorporating Tiledmedia’s ClearVR viewport-adaptive streaming technology, all deployed in Google Cloud Platform. The solution delivered two live 6K 360-degree video streams from a basketball match to consumers.

Now in its 10th year, the NAB Technology Innovation Award, which was presented to Olie Baumann, Senior Technical Specialist, MediaKind, recognizes organizations that bring advanced technology exhibits and demonstrations of significant merit to NAB Show.

Angel Ruiz, CEO, MediaKind says : “Winning the 2019 NAB Technology Innovation Award is an enormous honor and a wonderful way to mark our inaugural NAB Show as MediaKind. As consumers – especially sports fans – push for more ways to not only watch but experience their favorite live events, being ready to deliver the next generation of immersive experiences to multiple devices and in multiple formats is key. This award win confirms we are leading the way in the rapid evolution of 360-degree video technology and how, by pushing the potential of this technology, we are reshaping the way live sports and music events can be watched in the future.”

The delivery of this award-winning live stream offers a sample use case of MediaKind’s new commercially launched 360-degree video processing as a Service (360aaS) solution for live events, which forms part of the Cygnus family of solutions in the MediaKind Universe. At MediaKind’s NAB Show booth (#SU720), visitors will get a first-hand experience of this immersive technology. MediaKind will exhibit pre-recorded content from the December 2018 proof of concept event to showcase this unique innovation and recreate many of the elements used in the multi-partner collaboration in which Deutsche Telekom commissioned the project, Magnum Film did the production, INVR.SPACE delivered the 360 cameras and stitching infrastructure and Tiledmedia provided the tiled streaming technology.

Rob Koenen, Founder and CBO, Tiledmedia says: “We are proud to be part of the team that proved the feasibility of delivering beyond-4K immersive experiences on a massive scale. As the quality of headsets keeps increasing, as it must, the quality for consumers increases too, but so do the challenges of distributing the bits. ClearVR tiled streaming, integrated in MediaKind’s 360aaS platform, lets content owners distribute very high-quality VR360 content over existing networks – today.”

The live streams of the basketball match between Telekom Baskets Bonn and EWE Baskets Oldenburg from the Telekom Dome in Bonn, Germany were delivered to customers of Deutsche Telekom’s commercial Magenta VR service via a consumer app. To enable cost effective processing and streaming of viewport-adaptive 360 video content live from sports events to a base of real-world consumers, MediaKind created a live encoding workflow using stateless microservices within a Google Cloud instance using the Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE).

The 360-degree live encoding workflow combined MediaKind’s virtualized software encoding technology with Tiledmedia’s ClearVR streaming technology which was then orchestrated and deployed in Google Cloud Platform. The devops approach to deployment and operation used MediaKind’s software-based probes to monitor every point of data traffic flow and cloud processing operation, create customizable and detailed operational dashboards using common cloud visualization tools, and orchestration to deploy, scale, and tear-down the entire public-cloud based 360-degree live encoding workflow as needed.

This world’s first live 6K, tiled, 360-degree video delivery to end users was made possible by the collaboration of Deutsche Telekom, Magnum Film, INVR.SPACE, Tiledmedia and MediaKind. This has been further recognized by being shortlisted for best ‘Project, collaboration or event’ at The IABM’s 2019 BaM Awards?. The winner of this award will be announced during the NAB Show.

To learn more about how MediaKind’s industry-leading 360-degree video processing technology can be combined with technical support access and workflow monitoring to open up a range of new immersive experiences and applications, visit www.mediakind.com.

–ENDS–

About MediaKind at NAB Show

At NAB Show 2019, MediaKind (#SU720) will show how it is enabling content owners, broadcasters and service providers to evolve, adapt and shift to new and dynamic workflows with its portfolio of next generation solutions and services. During the show it will present the MediaKind Universe, a solution and service portfolio with industry renowned breadth and depth. Just as the consumer is positioned firmly at the center of today’s media universe, encircled by choice, the MediaKind Universe responds in kind, enabling content owners & originators, broadcasters and pay TV operators service providers to efficiently deliver unique, immersive experiences. For further information please visit here.

About MediaKind
We are MediaKind, a global leader of media technology and services, established as a joint venture between One Equity Partners and Ericsson. Our mission is to be the first choice among service providers, operators, content owners and broadcasters looking to deliver immersive media experiences. Drawing on our longstanding industry heritage, we are driving next-generation live and on-demand, mobile and multiscreen media experiences for everyone, everywhere. Our end-to-end portfolio of media solutions include Emmy award-winning video compression solutions for contribution and direct-to-consumer video service distribution; advertising and content personalization solutions; high efficiency cloud DVR; and TV and video delivery platforms. For more information, please visit: www.mediakind.com.