GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Captioning real time and offline to give all people accessibility for life, VITAC Corporation today announced VITAC Power Connect™, a new cloud service that hardwires continuous programming from real-time captioners to live broadcasting encoders. First of its kind, this new cloud service solves one of the most critical live captioning issues — the threat of captioning loss due to ISP outages and modem drops.
“With three decades under our belt, VITAC is a proven industry leader with a history of delivering advanced captioning solutions,” said VITAC CEO P. Kevin Kilroy. “VITAC Power Connect is yet another demonstration of our ability to innovate, underscoring our continuing investment in people, process and advanced technology to meet the requirements of our customers and their audiences who rely on their services.”
VITAC Power Connect is being previewed for the first time at a VITAC reception coinciding with the NAB Show in Las Vegas on April 24-25, 2017.
“Always-on is the name of the game,” said Ted Collins, CTO of VITAC. “Caption outages are the number one threat to our powerhouse team of 500+ real-time captioners at VITAC and to encoders at virtually every major broadcasting company and cable channel in America.”
While the U.S. network and telecommunications grid is unmatched in failover capacity and reliability, VITAC Power Connect fortifies that grid with a secure gateway for reliable connectivity by “hardening the workflow.” Highlighted benefits of VITAC Power Connect include:
- Connection: reduces disconnects for encoder due to captioner ISP issues
- Security: implements heightened encryption gateways between captioner and encoder
- Legacy: eliminates the need for traditional phone lines, even for older encoders
- Visibility: enables broadcasters to monitor, route and schedule captions
- Failover: serves internet, wireless, and telephone lines simultaneously
Revolutionizing Captioning Connectivity
VITAC Power Connect works by “hardening” the network or connections between the captioner and encoder, providing redundant paths for video, audio and caption data. Those redundant paths are monitored in real time and managed automatically to ensure uninterrupted service delivery. The VITAC Power Connect service will also immediately enhance existing audio coupler technology to harden VITAC’s secure connection to the broadcaster.
An important component of the VITAC Power Connect service is its cloud-based Control Tower, which monitors all of the highly available network connections and adds modules for:
- Intelligence to monitor captions and extract detailed compliance reporting
- Planning to schedule or review upcoming programming
- Control to route caption data to any and all encoders with the push of a button
For major media and entertainment companies, reliability and security are paramount in delivering continuous live programming, today. VITAC Power Connect addresses these requirements by:
- Eliminating the need for broadcasters to upgrade equipment
- Enhancing broadcast network connectivity across all transport mechanisms
- Adding layers of encryption to ensure the safest available data transfer systems
- Opening and reinforcing secure gateways to bypass outdated equipment
VITAC Power Connect is scheduled for availability Q2 2017.
About VITAC
VITAC Corporation is the largest provider of real-time and offline captioning products and services in the United States. Responsible for captioning more than 500,000 live-program hours per year, VITAC also creates verbatim, precisely timed captions for 57,000 pre-recorded programs per year. VITAC’s customers include every major broadcasting company, most cable networks, program producers, corporations, educational institutions and government agencies. Founded in 1986, VITAC employs more than 500 of the most skilled and tenured captioning professionals in the industry. For more information, please visit www.vitac.com and follow the company on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
VITAC Power Connect is a trademark of VITAC Corporation. All other brand names and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
Tags: VITAC, accessibility, captioning, closed caption, video description, audio description, subtitling, subtitles, encoders, captioner, broadcast network, cable network
