SCIENCE

ViewCast Corporation has announced that Major League Gaming (MLG), the largest professional video game league in the world, has selected ViewCast's Osprey 700e HD video capture cards to underpin its live streaming infrastructure. Delivering over 1.9 million streams of its live events in HD to viewers around the globe for up to 60 hours at a time, MLG counts on Osprey 700e's unmatched performance and reliability to ensure a highly immersive viewing experience for legions of passionate gamers and gaming fans.

"Live event streaming is a critical component of our operations, enabling MLG to cultivate and cater to an ever-growing online community of professional and aspiring professional gamers while expanding sponsorship and revenue opportunities," said Lee Chen, SVP Premium Services and Live Event Streaming, Major League Gaming. "ViewCast's Osprey 700e HD video capture cards equip us with a high performance, ultra reliable video capture platform to facilitate the delivery of high quality HD programming to our viewers."

In addition to meeting MLG's stringent performance and reliability requirements, ViewCast's Osprey 700e HD cards ensure seamless compatibility with MLG's encoding software, Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder and Microsoft Windows 7 drivers, in a low-profile design format for easy integration within MLG's proprietary streaming hardware. Providing a seamless PCI Express interconnect for high-speed throughput, Osprey 700e cards help to optimize overall system performance and enhance networking flexibility.

MLG utilizes multiple Osprey 700e HD cards to power its encoding infrastructure, encoding real-time video for live streaming while simultaneously capturing content for post-event video-on-demand (VOD). MLG provides three concurrent live broadcast streams in multiple resolutions from its events, which take place throughout the year at various locations nationwide. Osprey 700e's ability to maintain consistent performance and stability throughout HD broadcasts that can run up to 62 hours is critical to the success of MLG's event coverage, precluding the need to reboot or cycle through encoders. For MLG's 50th anniversary event in Raleigh, NC, fans consumed over 2.3 million streams and 825,000 hours of video over the 60 hour long broadcast, all powered by ViewCast's ultra-reliable Osprey 700e HD cards.

Renowned for their performance, reliability and management versatility, ViewCast's award-winning Osprey 700e HD cards provide advanced capabilities such as dual SD/HD support with seamless on-the-fly signal switching, and the ability to feed multiple encoders (RealVideo, Windows Media, Adobe Flash and MPEG-4) at the same time in any combination. Osprey cards enable advanced features such as hardware audio gain control, closed-caption extraction, image cropping and bitmap overlay to ensure maximum management flexibility and control.

"Major League Gaming's ability to seamlessly meld online gaming with live event streaming distinguishes the company as a true pioneer in the digital media marketplace," said ViewCast President and CEO Dave Stoner. "For organizations seeking to push the boundaries of live competitive event coverage – real or virtual – ViewCast provides the high performance HD capture and streaming solutions they need to ensure a world-class online viewing experience."