Soliton Partners With Studio Hamburg MCI

Soliton has partnered with Studio Hamburg MCI GmbH in Germany, boosting its continuing expansion into Europe.

Headquartered in Hamburg, MCI has over 40 years experience in IT and broadcast Systems Integration for a variety of Broadcast and Public safety customers on thousands of projects for hundreds of customers.

MCI will resell Soliton's live streaming Outside Broadcast (OB) products, including the Zao and Zao-S, which are miniature H265 HEVC mobile encoders for live remote production.

The Smart Telecaster range of "Zao" products are used for live events, typically sports production and news gathering environments, by connecting and live streaming direct from the camera on location. They operate by compressing the video to the latest standard of H265, sometimes known as HEVC, and then live streaming over multiple mobile 3G or 4G networks simultaneously. By using H265 as a compression standard, the Zao products are 50% more efficient than traditional h264 encoders. By using multiple 4G connections, they provide high reliability, even in areas with weak signal or congested with many users, though they can also be used with satellite and/or Wifi connectivity.

"Given MCI's heritage and reputation in the broadcast market, we are deeply honoured to have them represent us in the German market," said Mark Andrews, the Sales Manager of Soliton Systems Europe. "We look forward to working with Studio Hamburg MCI and serving their customers with our innovative technology."

Tim Grevenitz, Head of Sales & Marketing at MCI, added: "Studio Hamburg MCI is one of the leading providers of TV live productions equipment and systems. As part of the Studio Hamburg Group, we tested the Soliton Zao solutions and were extremely impressed with its performance and picture quality, even at low bandwidths, especially when compared to other manufacturers.

"As a consequence of our testing and knowledge of the market, and an appreciation of Soliton's road-map going forward, we decided to represent the Zao products for the DACH market."

Studio Hamburg MCI has three offices in Germany and has acquired a demo Zao-S unit that can be used by their clients for evaluation.

solitonsystems.com