Digital Rapids — the leading provider of tools and solutions for bringing television, film and web content to wider audiences — is taking live streaming to new heights, with new products and enhancements across their entire range of live stream encoding and management systems. Live streaming solutions being unveiled today at the NAB Show in Las Vegas include high definition models in the StreamZ Live family of encoders, a new version of the Digital Rapids Broadcast Manager multi-encoder management software, and the NAB debut of the award-winning TouchStream portable streaming appliance. Digital Rapids also announced plans to incorporate support for Microsoft’s Smooth Streaming technology in upcoming product versions.

“Our leadership in live streaming solutions has been widely recognized, especially with our success streaming over 120 online channels of the Beijing Summer Games for leading broadcasters including NBC and CCTV,” said Brian Stevenson, Director of Product Management at Digital Rapids. “The new extensions to our product lines further increase our advantages, from the quality benefits of true HD streaming to robust, automated, multi-channel management. Meanwhile, our new TouchStream portable appliances combine the easiest user interface on the market with flexible features at a game-changing price point.”

StreamZ Live encoders bring the renowned output quality and reliability of Digital Rapids’ StreamZ and StreamZHD versatile encoding systems to a dedicated live platform, ideal for applications from webcasting to multi-channel IPTV deployments. A full range of StreamZ Live configurations offers a comprehensive selection of digital and analog input options, and choices of one or more output formats. HD-compatible StreamZ Live models accept SD, 720p, 1080p and 1080i inputs, outputting streams up to full 1920×1080 HD in select formats, including full-frame-rate 1080p streaming for H.264-powered web experiences.

The new, multiple award-winning TouchStream appliance delivers Digital Rapids’ renowned live streaming quality in a fully self-contained, portable form factor. TouchStream appliances offer unparalleled ease of use. Streamlined software controls are accessed through a touch-screen interface with integrated live video monitoring and audio VU meters, eliminating the need for laptops, keyboards, mice and separate monitors. Additional features including sophisticated pre-processing, video adjustments and graphic overlay let you refine the incoming source for optimal quality and add branding such as a logo to the outgoing stream.

Streamlining operations for multi-channel installations, the Digital Rapids Broadcast Manager enterprise-class live streaming management software provides robust automation, monitoring and fault tolerance for multiple StreamZ Live, StreamZ and StreamZHD encoders. The new version 1.4 of Broadcast Manager features enhanced enterprise integration capabilities including Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) monitoring support, enabling Broadcast Manager error conditions to be monitored alongside other SNMP-compatible devices by any SNMP-compliant network management system. Additional new features include extended user authorization and access control, and enhanced port management for firewall and proxy traversal.

Digital Rapids also announced plans to incorporate support for Microsoft’s advanced new Smooth Streaming technology into future versions of the company’s live streaming and on-demand content encoding solutions. Smooth Streaming enables adaptive streaming of live and on-demand media, dynamically detecting the best quality a viewer can receive based on their current bandwidth and local computer conditions. Leveraging the Web’s massive existing HTTP infrastructure, Smooth Streaming switches seamlessly between multiple versions of the stream to deliver a consistent, high-quality viewing experience — up to true 1080p HD — even under changing connectivity conditions.

The complete line of Digital Rapids solutions is being showcased in booth number SL6213 at the 2009 NAB Show, April 20-23 in Las Vegas. For more information, please visit www.digital-rapids.com.