May 5, 2008
Vusion vision is for instant-on hi-def video
Jittr, the video delivery network, emerged from “stealth mode” today as Vusion, a name change that seems necessary given its claims of providing jitter-free high-definition pictures over the internet.
The Silicon Valley company also announced its first customer: Island Def Jam Music Group, which has a roster including Mariah Carey, Kanye West, Rihanna and The Killers. The Vusion platform will deliver an online video portal of DVD-quality versions of the artists’ music videos.
Jittr is entering a crowded space dominated by big names Akamai and Limelight. Other notable content delivery networks (CDNs) include Move Networks, which powers ABC television’s high-quality video, BitTorrent, Vuze, Edgecast, Grid, Level 3 and Panther Express.
The Streamingmedia.com blog tracks more than 40 CDNs. It says the market is too crowded and a shakeout is inevitable.
However, Grover Righter, Vusion’s marketing chief, insisted in an interview that the company was not a CDN.
CDNs focused on servers on the edge of networks, http downloading, caching and serving flash video and images, he told me.
Vusion was focused on longer format, high-quality video served over the regular internet but processed by its servers in data centres, using its proprietary Wide Area Rapid Propagation (Warp) protocol.
Warp essentially is the secret sauce that allows Vusion to serve video in a way that it claims eliminates buffering - so there is an instant-on for the video plus channel-changing without delays.
Mr Righter says media companies at last month’s NAB broadcasters convention in Las Vegas were so impressed with the technology that they were now planning to bring forward 2010 plans for high-definition video over the internet by 18 months.
“This is a rapidly growing market, there’s room for several players and I think ours is a better machine,” he said.
The San Jose start-up was founded two years ago and has under 50 employees. It has received an unspecified investment from BlueRun Ventures, the Nokia-backed VC fund.
It may or may not be a CDN, but it is chasing the same customers and a lighter less-expensive infrastructure than its rivals could allow it to undercut their prices.
