Video optimisation specialist, Beamr Imaging Ltd, has received $4 million in funding from Verizon Ventures. The money will be used to develop improved network performance and and video quality.
Analyst Comment
Verizon has an OTT video streaming service, go90, aimed at mobile video users so it seems reasonable to assume that it believes that Beamr can help it develop lower bit rates or better quality in that application. When we first heard about Beamr, back in 2013, we thought it might be ‘smoke and mirrors’, however discussion with compression specialists helped us to understand that pre-processing or a customised compressor can, effectively, modify an image in ways that are perceptually invisible to make them easier to compress. This is basically the same kind of process as used in, for example, the VESA DisplayStream compression. Beamr claims to halve the bitrates needed for a given quality using H.264, about the same as the claims for DSC. (BR)
