High Quality Video and Audio Transport Enhance Multi-Site Services and Special Events

SEATTLE - March 22, 2007

Northland, A Church Distributed – a network of five interactive churches based in the Central Florida region – is now using the Streambox^® SBT3-7400 and SBT3-7100 video transport systems to enhance its worship services and encourage interaction between its 7,000 members, spread across the church’s five sites.

“We have a strong multi-site focus at Northland. It’s very important to us that our congregations in this city and beyond can be connected in worship at the same time,” said Sean Borowski, Northland’s Video Director. “Our Streambox systems enable us to share high-quality live video and audio content with our entire congregation regardless of location. The quality has been so good that our members have been surprised to learn that they’re watching live services and not pre-taped programming.”

Supplied by Media Visions, a Streambox reseller, the SBT3-7400 and SBT3-7100 systems enable Northland to stream up to six channels of audio and one channel of video from its full video production facility to and from smaller flight packs at its other campuses. The full duplex SBT3-7400 video transport system is installed at Northland’s main campus in Longwood, Fla., while the SBT3-7100 system is moved between campuses as required by the schedule of services. Using those two systems, Northland provides real-time bidirectional streaming of sermons and songs by ”distributing” different parts of each service throughout its sites. These capabilities are key components of providing an interactive worship experience for the expanding congregation. 

“One of the greatest strengths of the Streambox systems has been the flexibility of the inputs and outputs. We’re not just bound to a two-channel mix. We’ve been able to quickly and easily reconfigure the systems for use at different sites and for different purposes,“ said Borowski. “The only limit to the Streambox solution so far is our own pipeline. We’re currently operating on 3 Mbps T1 bands, yet even with that limited bandwidth, the video quality is astonishing. In a few months we’ll transition to a MetroLAN service, and we’re really looking forward to making full use of Streambox’s real-time capabilities at that point.”

The Streambox^® SBT3-7100 and SBT3-7400 systems are true 24/7 plug-and-connect, real-time video transport solutions that deliver stunning full-motion, full frame interlaced broadcast video and audio over IP-based networks. The core feature of the SBT3-7400 system is its full duplex mode, which enables each unit to operate as an encoder and a decoder at the same time. The solution facilitates simultaneous transmission and receiving, making it ideal for bidirectional video worship. Each system is based on the Streambox^® ACT-L3™ technology which excels over low bandwidth connections while providing unrivaled video quality.

“Based on the successes we’ve had with this technology, Northland recently elected to standardize on Streambox as our streaming solution for new facilities, including our new 3,500-seat sanctuary, which will be completed mid-2007,” added Borowski. “Our experience in working with Streambox has been wonderful. Their systems are extremely robust, resilient to dropped frames, and compress to an extremely low bit rate – all of which are absolutely crucial to our success in best serving our members and facilitating bidirectional worship. Our number one concern was dropped frames which could distract from the congregation’s personal worship experience, especially when the video is output on a 20 ft. theater style screen. Without a question Streambox has come through with flying colors.”

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About Streambox, Inc.
Streambox provides a single platform for all live and file-based video acquisition over IP. The company develops industry-leading solutions for encoding, video management, and play-out for broadcast and broadband based on the innovative ACT-L3™ codec. Our software-based solutions provide unrivaled performance, reliability, and video quality over low data rate wired and wireless IP networks. Streambox solutions enable broadcasters, government agencies, and enterprises and other users to enhance content ownership, simplify operations, and increase operational efficiencies. More information is available at www.streambox.com.

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