VITEC today announced an integrated streaming solution designed to help houses of worship extend their reach across multiple campuses and foster a sense of community among church members who attend services at different sites. The solution, which bundles VITEC portable encoders and decoders with the Zixi, is billed as an “error-free” streaming protocol, and claims it is just as effective as — and far more affordable than — satellite or fiber-based streaming services, making it accessible for houses of worship of almost any size.

VITEC’s encoder/decoder combinations with integrated Zixi Stream Protection take advantage of an increase in bandwidth and a decrease in the cost of the public Internet to enable real-time streaming of church services and events over the same Internet services people use at home. VITEC’s portable appliances encode and stream up to 1080p60 video for the highest level of HD video quality at the lowest possible latency.

At the same time, integration with Zixi’s proven, unique transport software eliminates the video-transport problems that are inherent in unmanaged IP networks. This integration ensures that houses of worship can deliver video of unprecedented quality with no stutter, packet loss or frame-freeze, regardless of network conditions.

VITEC/Zixi live-streaming solutions are available in three different bundles to enable point-to-point, bidirectional, and multisite streaming. The point-to-point streaming bundle includes a VITEC encoder and decoder with integrated Zixi Stream Protection for zero-error delivery over unmanaged networks. This bundle includes a lifetime Zixi license. The bidirectional streaming solution includes two sets of VITEC encoders and decoders — one set for each location — and a lifetime license for Zixi Stream Protection. This solution ensures low-latency streaming for natural two-way communication and live interaction between the main and satellite campuses.

The multi-site distribution bundle consists of a VITEC encoder at the main campus, a VITEC decoder at each of the satellite campuses, and a Zixi Broadcaster platform in the middle. Zixi Broadcaster acts as a central hub that manages, processes, and distributes content in various formats. The combination of VITEC and Zixi components provides content-aware error correction, bandwidth shaping, and real-time feedback of streaming status for multisite streaming over any network. Zixi Broadcaster also makes it possible for a house of worship to record streams and play them out later to other campuses.

More information is here.