Multi-party audiovisual systems for Wide Area Networks

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Live streaming video is the building block of the current consumer web experience. Everything we eat, drink, watch, and experience is streamed into our lives on an ever-growing list of devices. However, live interactive video streaming is still at a formative stage. Network conferencing such as Skype is far from High Definition (HD) broadcast quality while broadcast quality video streaming to the web is currently limited to the single direction TV model. Broadcast streaming is launched to the Internet via cable from camera to satellite or by WiFi from smart phones to wireless networks. Increasingly, video streaming from remote locations is enabled by specialized video encoders. These units encode the data from a video camera and stream it to the Internet via satellite or mobile hot spots. However, this is still pure and simple point-to-point broadcasting. The traditional audience is still in place and is not equal participants in the process. Real time video interaction is now the end goal of the Internet. Based in Vancouver, MAX Q Live is developing a Global Web Portal built on interactively streaming video both to and from the web online in real time 24/7. To accomplish this task from any location on earth requires satellite transmission and a broadcast camera. The key limitation for broadcast to web interactivity has been a 40-second latency between the broadcast and web formats. MAX and an engineering team at SFU have created a breakthrough technology that, for the first time, allows the web video stream to interact with a broadcast source without latency. The project was supported by a previous NSERC Engage grant. It was a proof of technology that utilized a Local Area Network (LAN) setup that eliminated the existing delay of 40 seconds. The goal of this project is to build on the initial breakthrough and extend it to a Wide Area Network (WAN) application for full commercial use. This will position MAX Q Live to launch full operations in the Fall 2016.