09 Dec Magenta VR: Basketball Bundesliga live for the first time in 360-degree stream

Deutsche Telekom has  streamed a live Basketball Match from the German “Bundesliga” in high quality, 6K tiled VR on Sunday 9 December at 15:00 CET. The match was covered with two cameras, and every user of the Magenta VR app had free access. The app allows seamless switching between the two cameras, of which one is placed at the sideline in the middle of the court, and the other is mounted to one of the basket posts.

Read our blog post here: World’s First Dual-Camera 6K Live VR Production

Read the press release here (in German): Magenta Virtual Reality: Basketball Bundesliga erstmals live im 360-Grad-Stream.

Here is an English translation of the full release:

Magenta Virtual Reality: Basketball Bundesliga live for the first time in 360-degree stream

• Telekom Baskets Bonn against EWE Baskets Oldenburg on 9 December in 360-degree live streaming
• Innovative live technology: Tiled-Based Streaming ensures HD experience
• Free access for anyone with Magenta VR App

On the 9th of December, a Telekom Baskets game against EWE Oldenburg Baskets will be broadcast for the first time in the Magenta VR app – live from the Telekom Dome in Bonn, in high-quality 360-degrees video. The live stream will be available for free, and the transmission starts at 14:45 hours, with the tip-off at 15:00 hours.

The online VR distribution of this basketball game allows sports and basketball enthusiasts to be present up close via the App. With the Magenta VR App, you can cheer with the teams in 360 degree VR directly from the sidelines. Deutsche Telekom uses an innovative technology for the live stream – the so-called Tiled-Based Stream, which transmits the video in the user’s direct field of view in HD resolution. With a VR headset like the Lenovo Mirage Solo, streaming users feel even more present in the stadium, live, while the game happens.

Stephan Heininger, Head of Deutsche Telekom Virtual Reality, is convinced: “With Magenta VR and Magenta Musik 360, Telekom already offers a wide range of excellent virtual entertainment formats. In doing so, we are always looking to offer our users the highest streaming quality and, in the future, even more live broadcasts. Tiled-based streaming already enables the best VR experience ever.”

Dr. Stefan Holz, Managing Director of EasyCredit BBL, is also enthusiastic: “The 360-degree live streaming is further proof that with Deutsche Telekom we have an innovative partner at our side that always finds ways to take reporting on our sport to a new level. “

Users can watch the 360 ​​degree sport highlight for free via the Magenta VR app on Android smartphones, Samsung Gear VR, Oculus Go and Daydream headsets.

Anett Sattler and ex-basketball international Pascal Roller will be on site for interviews, introducing the new 360-degree broadcast to the audience as well as providing  game analysis. Match commentary is provided by Stefan Koch.

The technical implementation:

• Magnum Film acts as a general contractor, is responsible for the production on site and manages the others partners together with Deutsche Telekom.
• INVR.SPACE is responsible for recording the 360-degree streams in 6K resolution.
• MediaKind transfers the streams to the cloud and processes, encodes and distributes them via a CDN for Magenta VR users.
• Tiledmedia’s innovative tile-based streaming technology was integrated in the MediaKind platform as well as Magenta VR app,allowing streaming in high quality via regular internet connections and even over 4G.
• Iconic Engine implemented support for the tile-based live stream in the Magenta VR App for an intuitive, immersive and interactive experience. “

09 Dec World’s First 6K Live VR Production

• Live VR360 streaming of a professional league basketball game with ClearVR;
• Full, multi-party, professional, end-to-end chain;
• Two simultaneous camera feeds with instant user-initiated switching;
• High, 6K VR360 quality at average bitrates below 10 Mbit/s per user;
• Full, mixed audio feeds audio with professional commentary;
  
• Unlimited scalability of distribution (within CDN constraints);
• Playback of the same 6K sources across multiple platforms: today’s VR Headsets (Oculus Go and Gear VR), and Android tablets, phones and STBs.  Select iOS users also had access. 

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Deutsche Telekom issued a Press Release to announce the event.

On Sunday 9 December, Tiledmedia’s ClearVR technology enabled the world’s first public live VR production at a resolution considerably exceeding the 4K traditionally used for live VR streaming. This event followed a successful try-out on November 11 in the same venue: The Telekom Dome in Bonn.

Deutsche Telekom issued a Press Release to announce the event.

Commissioned by Deutsche Telekom and available in DT’s MagentaVR app, the project partners built a complete end-to-end system around our ClearVR tiled streaming technology. On 11 November and 9 December it went online to stream professional Bundesliga Basketball matches from Bonn, DE, in high-quality 360-degree Virtual Reality. The matches were Crailsheim Merlins @ Telekom Baskets on 11 November and EWE Oldenburg Baskets @ Telekom Baskets on 9 December.

Users across Europe had a choice between two cameras, both streamed in high, 6K quality; one at the sideline in front of the officials’ table, and the other mounted to the post of one of the baskets.

Magnum Film was responsible for the production, using cameras supplied by INVR and live editing software provided by Imeve.

MediaKind ingested the raw feeds into its cloud platform and performed the “tiling”, encoding and packaging.

These tiles where fed into Akamai‘s CDN origin server, from which the streams were made available across Europe for playback in the Magenta VR app, which had been updated by Iconic Engine to support ClearVR streaming.

Sports presenter Anett Sattler interviewing 2004 Bundesliga MVP Pascal Roller on the use of VR in engaging basketball fans

These were the first-ever events streamed in VR at this quality – not a trade show demo, but a real, end-to-end, glass-to-glass service available over just a regular Internet connection. The bitrate for end-users hovered around 10 Mbit/s second throughout the events – about 50% of what is usually required for 4K VR distribution, and about 25% of what would be needed for real-time 6K VR streaming using non-tiled technology. And even if it were possible to distribute a  6K signal in its entirety, today’s devices wouldn’t be able to play it – they only have a 4K decoder. ClearVR overcomes these limitations.

Viewers were able to use their MagentaVR app on a standard Oculus Go or Gear VR to follow the game with commentary.  The streams were also available on tablets and Android phones via Tiledmedia’s ClearVR demonstration application. We even had it available on an Android Set Top Box connected to a large TV at Tiledmedia’s offices, where we were able to pan using the remote – a surprisingly compelling experience.

All participants were able to switch back and forth between the two cameras with only 50 millisecond switching time – an instant switch to the user.

The events worked flawlessly. On both occasions, two 3.5 hour streams ran without a single interruption and were available to anyone across Europe. The glass-to-glass latency was about 30 seconds, which we expect to be able to bring in the 5 – 10 second range by doing a few straightforward optimizations.

We look forward to taking this another level up: moving from monoscopic to stereoscopic, from 30 frames per second to 60 fps, and distributing to a larger group of users. Watch this space!

Putting cabling into the control room

The central camera (basket camera being mounted in the background)

Mounting the camera to the basket post

VR Control Room

Some of the equipment

Remotely monitoring ClearVR quality with taco chips and beer during a Sunday session at Tiledmedia HQ, Rotterdam, NL.

25 Sep Rob Koenen on IBC TV: VR360 is here, now

Rob Koenen was interviewed by IBC TV during the 5-day show, in his role as Tiledmedia Founder and VRIF President. He talked about the reality of VR360 today, and gave a glimpse into the future of immersive media. See the 6-minute interview on IBC’s website.

A longer interview with Bleuenn Le Goffic (Accedo) and Rob, along the same lines but much more in-depth, is available here:

05 Sep Meet Tiledmedia at IBC 2018, 14-18 September

Tiledmedia will be out in force at IBC 2018. See our dedicated IBC 2018 page for details.

12 Jul Tiledmedia Featured in De Telegraaf newspaper

On Wednesday 11 July, Tiledmedia was featured in the financial section of NL’s largest newspaper, De Telegraaf:  “Streaming VR Live“

It’s a very nice article; obviously in Dutch;  part of a weekly series highlighting companies in the SME Innovation Top 100 (“MKB Innovatie Top 100”), which runs until the final ranking is announced on September 26th. We were the first company to appear in this series!

29 Jun Tiledmedia in SME Innovation Top 100 2018

Tiledmedia was voted into the MKB (Small and Medium Enterprise) Innovation Top 100 recently. Secretary of State of Economic Affairs, Mona Keijzer, unveiled the list on 25 June. All 250 competitors were judged on relevance for the sector and society, originality, availability of the technology, revenue and growth potential.

The ranking within the 100 will be announced on September 26th. The announcement by the Dutch Chamber of Commerce is here (in Dutch).

01 May InnovationQuarter Announces Tiledmedia Investment

At the Rotterdam Capital Days, the West Holland Innovation Accelerator and investor InnovationQuarter went on stage to announce its recent investment in Tiledmedia and hand the traditional investment tomb stone to Tiledmedia CEO Frits Klok.

InnovationQuarter’s press release can be found here.

Left to right: Rob Koenen, Ray van Brandenburg, Anoesjka Imambaks (Venture Café), Francis Quint (IQ), Frits Klok, Marty le Clerq (IQ)

22 Mar “New Tech Promises Live VR QoE Far Superior to Olympics …”

Screen Plays Magazine features a great write-up by Fred Dawson on the state of VR Streaming, and why we need tiling. The article quotes a number of relevant sources from across the industry. Read it here: New Tech Promises Live VR QoE Far Superior to Olympics Coverage!

05 Jan ClearVR Wins Advanced Imaging Society’s 2018 Technology Award

Our groundbreaking ClearVR streaming technology is now also officially “Award-Winning”. The Advanced Imaging Society honored Tiledmedia with one of its 2018 Technology Awards for outstanding technical achievement in Entertainment Arts and Technologies.  And with Microsoft, Lytro  and Dolby among the winners, we are in very good company. Quoting from AIS’s website: “The Society’s globally recognized Lumiere Awards will be presented to technologies or processes which have demonstrated both innovation and impact in advancing the creation or delivery of quality content.”

And quoting from the press release:  “Our latest class of 10 Technology Awards honorees and our timely recognition of 13 women receiving our Distinguished Leadership Award encompass familiar names along with recent discoveries, all of which represent the most creative, productive and forward-thinking efforts in visual technology and emerging content,” said Jim Chabin, President and CEO of The Advanced Imaging Society.

Some more coverage here on Variety’s website.

Rob Koenen traveled to LA after CES to attend the awards luncheon on January 16th, and collected Tiledmedia’s first statuette on behalf of the team.

Rob thanked the AIS for the award. He said that he felt both honored and humbled to be among the winners, as a company that is barely a year old and until recently had only 4.5 people working for it. Rob further noted that he saw the Award as an indication that the belief is shared that immersive media hold great promise, but that the industry needs to keep working to improve the Quality of Experience.

See on Flickr for a few pictures.

We gave the statuette a nice place in our Rotterdam HQ, where it awaits the company of more awards. But it will be very hard to beat this statuette!

26 Dec Stereo Support Added to ClearVR

As of mid-December the ClearVR SDK and Packagers support stereoscopic content. We have been quietly testing it with a few partners, and it works fully as expected.

Adding support for stereoscopic content has been on our wish list for some time – and also on the wish lists of quite a few of our partners.

Next up: iOS support. Stay tuned!

17 Oct Videonet: VR360 environment cuts bit-rates by 75% and …

Nice article about our partner Viaccess-Orca’s Virtual Stadium solution – powered by ClearVR:

VR360 environment cuts bit-rates by 75% and offers new advertising and monetisation opportunities

22 Sep Videonet: Important IBC demos you may have missed

Writing for Videonet, John Moulding has a very nice write-up about the “VR-as-a-second-screen” demo we did with Ericsson and Sky:

Important IBC demos you may have missed

…

22 Sep IBC: Moving from Tech Demos to Products (and Download the ClearVR Brochure!)

COO Arjen Veenhuizen in a true VR interview at IBC

IBC was a great event. Lots of good feedback, lots of interest in our ClearVR technology. Our joint demo with Ericsson and Sky of VR-as-a-second-screen, to a head-mounted device and a tablet, drew significant interest. The same applies to the Virtual Stadium app shown by Viaccess-Orca, as well as the integration with spatial audio as shown by both DTS and Viaccess-Orca. Adding spatial audio makes VR a really immersive, compelling experience.

Transforming a technology demo to a set of convincing use cases made all the difference. What also made a difference: being able to show 6k streaming live, from Akamai’s production CDN, at the Akamai booth. And we didn’t just stream stream it over WiFi (always a huge challenge at a trade show) – we even showed 6k VR360 panoramas streaming over 4G. At the show!

Our ClearVR brochure is now available for download. It has a good summary of our SDK and Cloud solution.

Also, see the photo impression of Tiledmedia @IBC!

12 Sep First Integrated Solution for VR360 Streaming With Tiled Video and 3D Immersive Audio to be Demonstrated at IBC2017

PARIS — Sept. 12, 2017 — DTS, a global leader in high-definition audio solutions and a wholly owned subsidiary of Xperi Corporation (Nasdaq: XPER) (“Xperi”); Tiledmedia, a global frontrunner in flexible and affordable, low-latency delivery of extremely high-resolution video content to consumer devices; and Viaccess-Orca, a leading global solutions provider of OTT and TV platforms, content protection, and advanced data solutions for a personalized TV experience, will demonstrate the latest, most reliable way to deliver best-in-class VR360 audio and video for VR/AR via streaming media at IBC2017, Sept. 15-19 in Amsterdam.

Full release here

12 Sep NGCodec and Tiledmedia to Show Cloud Hardware-Accelerated Low-Latency HEVC VR360 Streaming Solution at IBC 2017

Sunnyvale / Rotterdam, Sep 12, 2016 07:00 (GMT+0:00) – Tiledmedia, a leader in tile-based directional Virtual Reality video streaming and NGCodec®, a company focused on FPGA-based video codec development, announced today that they have integrated their solutions to provide a cloud-based encoding service for efficient streaming of 360-degree Virtual Reality video (VR360). Tiledmedia is now able to offer high quality VR360 encoding using NGCodec’s hardware-accelerated HEVC encoder on an Amazon EC2 F1 instance, making the encoding and processing for Tiled VR streaming fast and affordable. The solution will be demonstrated at IBC 2017 in Amsterdam, from 15 to 19 September.

See full release here

09 Sep Sky, Ericsson, Tiledmedia to showcase VR live sports at IBC

Three members of the Virtual Reality Industry Forum (VRIF) – Sky, Ericsson and Tiledmedia – will showcase a real application of Virtual Reality (360 video) synced with live sports at this year’s IBC Show.

The companies will collaborate on an industry-first demonstration that will show how VR (360 video) can be used to enhance the viewing experience and deliver a truly immersive live TV event in the home.

Visitors to the Ericsson booth (Hall 1, D61) will have the opportunity to see what it’s like to be in the dugout when their favourite team scores a goal or at the wheel of a Formula 3 car when it makes that vital overtake, through untethered VR headsets and tablets, seamlessly synced with the main TV screen.

The demonstration will use Viewport-Adaptive streaming technology which harnesses Ericsson’s industry-leading HEVC software encoding technology and Tiledmedia’s innovative ClearVR tiled streaming technology to optimise the video quality to bandwidth ratio.

Content for the demo will centre around premier sports footage including Premier League football provided by Sky and Formula 3 4K HDR footage provided by Ericsson to illustrate different applications of how the technology can be used to complement a traditional broadcast view.

Together, Sky, Ericsson and Tiledmedia will show how the future consumer experience could change with the technology advances of VR (360 video) and how these technologies can truly make content come to life.

31 Aug Tiledmedia at IBC 2017: Impossible to Miss

If you are looking for innovation at IBC, it will be extremely hard not to run into Tiledmedia.

Our ClearVR tiled streaming technology will be demonstrated at the booths of quite a few innovative companies in the VR360 ecosystem, all of them leaders in their market segment: Akamai, Ericsson, Harmonic, Viaccess-Orca and DTS (an Xperi Company). Furthermore, we will be announcing integration with NGCodec for encoding in the cloud, on Amazon EC2 FPGA Instances, which puts us on a path to shortly support Live VR360 services.

This is in line with Tiledmedia’s market approach: to offer our technology through integration with best-of-breed partners rather than doing everything end-to-end ourselves.

Please contact us at hi@tiledmedia.com to see our ClearVR technology in action.

Akamai Technologies – 5.B52

A good CDN with many points of presence is important for any VR service, but it is absolutely crucial for Tiled VR Streaming. Working together, Akamai and Tiledmedia have implemented optimizations in Akamai’s network and in Tiledmedia’s ClearVR networking stack, enabling extremely rapid switching in response to head motion in head-mounted gear, and in response to zooming & panning on flat screens (tablets and phones). When access network conditions are favorable, the switching is virtually unnoticeable, which is unique for this type of solution.

At IBC, we are showing on-demand content streaming from Akamai’s production CDN to GearVR and an Oculus Rift headsets. We will also show VR streaming to an Android tablet for “flat navigation”.

The joint work will be presented at the Conference as well, where David Sztykman of Akamai will join Tiledmedia’s CTO Ray van Brandenburg in delivering the paper “CDN optimization for VR streaming”  at the Session Solving OTT’s Achilles’ Heel: Scale

Ericsson – 1.D61

Together with VRIF members Sky and Ericsson, we will showcase a real application of Virtual Reality (360 video) synced with live sports. This will be an industry-first demonstration of VR (360 video) enhancing the viewing experience and deliver a truly immersive live TV event in the home.

Visitors to the Ericsson booth (Hall 1, D61) will have the opportunity to see what it’s like to be in the dugout when their favorite team scores a goal or at the wheel of a Formula 3 car when it makes that vital overtake, through untethered VR headsets and tablets, seamlessly synced with the main TV screen.

We will show premier sports footage including Premier League football provided by Sky and Formula 3 4K HDR footage provided by Ericsson, to illustrate different applications of how the technology can be used to complement a traditional broadcast view.

Together, Sky, Ericsson and Tiledmedia will show how the future consumer experience will change with the technology advances of VR (360 video) and how these technologies will truly make content come to life.

Harmonic – 1.B20

At the booth of our partner-from-day-one Harmonic, and working with Viaccess-Orca and Digital Immersion, we’ll show tiled streaming to an untethered head-mounted device (Gear VR) and a flat screen (Android tablet). Sit between the host and the guest in a talk show, watch a tennis match at the edge of a court, or go on stage while Blue Man Group performs!

Viaccess-Orca – 1.A51

As another long-time partner, Viaccess-Orca has integrated our ClearVR SDK in a number of products. Together, we will show two demos:

• Viaccess-Orca’s completely revamped Virtual Arena app, a clean and attractive VR environment that lets users watch sports matches on a huge virtual screen. The Oculus/Android app allows these users to start fully immersive 360 views and supports social VR features.
• An Oculus/Android app that integrates immersive video with equally immersive audio. Both audio and video are of the highest quality, and both can be represented and transported very efficiently. This complete package is supported on today’s VR devices; a joint offering with DTS – see below.

DTS – 15.MS10 and Novotel Suite

The demo involves integrating high quality VR video with great immersive audio, and it’s a joint effort with Viaccess-Orca, and we’ll show the same demo – see above.

Contact us at hi@tiledmedia.com !

26 Aug Tiledmedia to pitch at IBC Startup Forum

Tiledmedia has been selected as one of the Startups to pitch at IBC’s Start-up Forum. See the full line-up of Investors and Startups here.

We will also be present with joint demos at six (!) partner booths, all six, without exception, industry leaders in their field. The details will be revealed early next week. One of them will be our long-term partner Harmonic, who briefly alludes to our joint demo in this press release.

23 Aug CED Magazine: “VR Tiling Technology Is Changing the Game in Virtual Reality Video”

Harmonic’s VP of Video Strategy, Thierry Fautier, wrote an article for CED Magazine based on the work Tiledmedia and Harmonic have been doing together. Quoting Fautier:

“There are several key benefits of VR tiling technology that make it attractive for commercial services. First and foremost, it allows streaming of VR content at a very high quality, using realistic and affordable bitrates. With this method and optimized video encoding, bitrates can be reduced by up to 80 percent without quality loss. Moreover, significant improvements can be made to the quality at bitrates similar to those used by a system that streams the entire sphere.”

Read the full article here.

22 Jul Already preparing for CES 2018

It feels early, but we’re already picking hotels and flights for Las Vegas in January 2018.

While we spent our time in a hotel suite during CES 2017 this year, we’re now going to have our own presence at the show floor. Tiledmedia has been selected to have a CES 2018 show floor presence at the Holland Startup Pavilion, an initiative by StartupDelta. The Pavilion is in Eureka Park, the most dynamic area of CES.

We are proud to be picked, as the interest for this mission is very strong. The highly successful 2017 CES mission with 30 carefully selected Dutch Startups was headed by Minister of Economic Affairs Henk Kamp, and the Dutch Government’s Special Startup Envoy Constantijn van Oranje. The mission received a lot of press attention and we fully expect that the 2018 event will be the same.

This will be our second mission to Las Vegas, after NAB last April.

And we surely hope that for Tiledmedia, what happens in Las Vegas won’t stay in Las Vegas.