Zype, a cloud-powered OTT video distribution service, has complemented its on-demand capabilities with a product that's focused on live video streaming.
Zype Live, targeted at events and linear channels, handles elements such as ingest, packaging, transcoding, and distribution, data analytics, and the ability to convert those events and feeds to VOD formats after a live program ends.
Zype said its new live platform also supports various business models, including subscriptions, pay –per-view, and free ad-based content, and can deliver that content to a wide range of devices, including Apple TV, Roku players, Web browsers, Amazon Fire TV boxes, smart TVs and iOS and Android mobile devices. Integrated multicasting can also support Facebook Live, YouTube and Twitch, the company said.
Zype got into live streaming after it built a private beta for select customers, including Compound Media, Ed Laczynski, Zype’s founder and CEO, said, noting that supporting live is more than transcoding and analytics, but a suite of orchestration that needs to occur before and after the event.
“We are getting a ton of demand for live,” he said. While Facebook and Periscope now offer live streaming capabilities, content makers have less control of their revenue streams.
Those options are “great for discovery and promotion…but not necessarily where you want to run your business,” Laczynski said.
Other early takers include Texan Live, a service that features live and on-demand high school sports from the Houston area. Texan Live is now poised to run 12 concurrent live streams as it ramps up coverage from eight teams to 42 teams.
Havoc.tv is also tapping Zype Live to launch a free and premium OTT service that’s set to launch this fall. Luis Network and Chukker.tv are also using it.
Zype’s other announced customers include NBTV Studios, Mill Creek Entertainment, The Rebel Media, The Film Detective, The Grind House, Brooklyn On Demand, Shout! Factory, and the All Babies Channel, among others.
Zype’s business model for live is based on a per subscriber/per transaction per month basis. Customers can use their own delivery networks or tap into Zype’s for streaming, charged by the hour.
Zype is a startup in a competitive field of streaming services that support both live and VOD, including NeuLion, Encoding.com, Comcast Wholesale, iStreamPlanet (owned by Turner), UStream (now part of IBM), and BAM Tech, the technology services and video streaming unit launched by Major League Baseball and now partly owned by Disney.
Zype’s new live product comes on the heels of $3.6 million in seed funding led by Revel Partners.
Zype was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in New York.
