VBrick equips companies to build their own TV stations

Traditionally, use of streaming video in the enterprise has been limited to transmitting tiny talking heads. Trying to include useful features such as whiteboard shots and product demonstrations has proven too difficult for all but the most advanced and costly video distribution systems

VBrick’s EtherneTV Media Distribution System changes that. It isn’t cheap, ranging from $10,000 to more than $100,000 for a complete system. Yet VBrick has succeeded in creating a single system that combines near-broadcast quality, appliancelike ease of setup, and flexible support for live broadcasts, on-demand streaming, and videoconferencing.

At the heart of the EtherneTV system is the MCS (Media Control Server), which facilitates browser-based control of live and stored video. Then there are the VBrick appliances, or “bricks,” which provide distributed or high-density encoding and decoding of MPEG video. A typical setup would have the bricks getting their initial configuration through DHCP, with the MCS handling connection or multicast channel setup.

My test setup included the VBrick 6300 brick, which came equipped with full-screen MPEG-2 encoders and decoders, and the VBrick 4300, which contained an MPEG–2 encoder and an MPEG-4 decoder. VBrick’s decision to offer MPEG-4 as an encoding alternative to the meat-and-potatoes MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 was a good one. The format meets low bandwidth requirements and can stream reasonably good video to even mobile phones and handhelds.

Each brick can be controlled in a variety of ways: via serial- or Telnet-based command line; with a Web browser through an encrypted login; with SNMP; and via the MCS scheduler.

I also tested the EtherneTV-NXG VOD (Video-On-Demand) Server, which boasts 75Mbps of streaming throughput and is capable of sending and receiving dozens of simultaneous media streams, and the EtherneTV-STB Set Top Box, which includes a single decoder for displaying streaming video on a TV or monitor.

Setting up the EtherneTV system is wonderfully simple. You can take a factory-fresh VBrick encoder, plug it into a DHCP-enabled network, and -- with just a little bit of configuration through the serial interface -- you are ready to stream.

It quickly became apparent during the setup of the various components that VBrick has paid a lot of attention to user comfort; even the occasional user should have no trouble. Context-sensitive help and well-worded configuration fields made this system nearly goof proof. Further, the look and feel are carried from each brick’s internal Web interface to the browser-based client/player to the VOD Server’s UI.

From the MCS Web interface, everything is point-and-click. From the UI, an admin can assign video streams to store to the NXG Server, rebroadcast the stream to multiple locations via unicast or multicast, or perform a lookup in the scheduler to connect directly to another VBrick unit, all without touching the keyboard.

Admins may set up time-based streaming through the scheduler to rebroadcast stored video, set up point-to-point video conferences, or set up broadcasts. Session setup can include testing for far-end equipment so high-bandwidth streams aren’t sent to nonexistent end points.

All the end-user interfaces are uncluttered and simple. For the Windows client, users just point their browser at the MCS, and the necessary plug-ins are automatically downloaded and configured.