itvt

–Unveils New “Advanced Progressive” API for Interactive Video Apps
–Company Powers Video for Strike.TV, ASU, SpaceX

BitGravity–a company which offers a content delivery network (CDN) that it bills as optimized for delivering HD-quality video live, on-demand and via interactive applications–and Revision3–a company which bills itself as “an actual TV network for the Web” and which develops and produces original broadband TV shows–recently teamed to add interactivity to an episode of one of Revision3’s most high-profile shows: “Diggnation,” which showcases the week’s top stories from social news site, Digg.com. The episode, which initially aired on November 21st and was entitled “Your Diggnation Remix,” used technology from BitGravity to allow viewers to choose from five simultaneous and separate video streams. “Diggnation was the first successful social video program featuring some of the top content voted on by the Digg community,” Revision3 CEO, Jim Louderback, said in a prepared statement. “Now we’re taking that to the next logical level, letting viewers control camera angles and other elements of the viewing experience. It’s a brand new and revolutionary way to give our viewers even more control, and more ownership, of the programs they love.” Added BitGravity co-founder and CTO, Barrett Lyon: “Internet users have these amazing computers and high-speed Internet connections; there’s no reason we have to replicate what we see on TV over the Internet–we have the opportunity to change the experience, play with new ideas, and allow available technology to take us to the next step. We’re here to enable innovation and change the way people get their entertainment–it’s pretty amazing what can be done by simply having fun with our API.”

According to BitGravity, its platform’s new “multiview” capability–development of which, it says, has been underway for the past six months, and which is the first project from the company’s new lab–is intended to show off its Advanced Progressive API (for which the company says a patent is pending). The company recently announced a new release of the API which it bills as providing extensive control over progressive downloads within Flash, and as enabling developers to inject advertising, automatically adjust bitrates, and add virtual clips and other advanced features into their H.264- and FLV-encoded video, thus “unlocking the ability to create affordable and scalable interactive HD video applications for the first time.” According to the company, the new API allows customers to enable bitrate adjustment between series of encoded videos, seek to any portion of video by timecode without having to download an entire file, show select scenes from a larger video, create start and stop points, allow time-range requests, synchronize videos from timecodes, and deliver bandwidth control. BitGravity also offers a library of source code that is billed as making it easy for customers to use the API and introduce feature-rich interactive video applications: it says that H.264 streaming with Advanced Progressive is a new option for its content delivery service. “From inception, our service was intended for interactive, fast-loading HD content delivery across the mainstream Internet, and this new release of our Advanced Progressive API with H.264 support is another milestone in keeping with this original vision,” BitGravity’s Lyon said in a prepared statement. “We will continue to enhance the API as necessary to expand our customers’ capabilities and options for affordably creating compelling interactive video applications for large-scale audiences.”

In other BitGravity news:

• The company’s CDN is powering Strike.TV, a new broadband video service that features original HD Web videos from established Hollywood writers and other creators (note: the service claims to currently have around 40 original Web series and shorts in a wide variety of genres). Strike.TV, which came about as a result of the recent Hollywood writers’ strike, bills itself as being “born from the collective desire of many of Hollywood’s top writers, directors and actors to create, control and distribute their own stories” and as providing an “outlet for total creative freedom and high-quality, professionally produced content.” It says that the talent behind its initial content line-up comes from such shows and movies as “The Office,” “Saturday Night Live,” “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” “The Wire,” “LonelyGirl15,” “Die Hard,” “Licence to Kill,” “General Hospital,” “Days of Our Lives,” “Child’s Play,” “Californication,” “Medium,” “Cold Case,” “How I Met Your Mother,” “Mad TV,” “Malcolm in the Middle,” “10 Items or Less,” and “The Bob Newhart Show.” The Strike.TV deployment sees BitGravity’s CDN working in conjunction with a video player from Episodic, and the companies say that the combination of their technologies allows the service’s content to be viewed across a range of operating systems, browsers and bandwidths. Strike.TV says it decided to work with the companies because of their “quality, scalability and ability to support a quickly growing audience and withstand the consistent flow of original content, on top of existing episodes, that Strike.TV has planned.” The new service’s Web site allows full-screen views, comments, and fan forums for each of its shows, and, it says, is intended to allow virtual communities to be built around those shows. The service says it also plans to use Facebook, MySpace and Twitter to “build a one-to-one relationship between creators and viewers.” It is also syndicating its content via YouTube and Joost, and through TiVo’s broadband content service. It says that its first three months of advertising revenue profits–with help from BitGravity and Episodic–will be donated to the Entertainment Assistance Program of entertainment-industry charity, The Actors Fund.
• The company’s HD video delivery capability is being used by Arizona State University’s Decision Theater to support its various collaborative decision-making and visualization projects. For more on this, see [itvt]’s interview with BitGravity co-founder and CEO, Perry Wu, in Issue 8.09.
• Private space transportation company, SpaceX, has tapped the company to provide live streaming video of the flights of its Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 launch vehicles, as well as of each of its initial demonstration flights.