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Summus thinks it has what it takes to make a splash in the streaming video market.
Summus formed High Speed Net Solutions for the distribution venture. Summus staffed the company with former direct marketing industry executives, and the company has poured several million dollars into Summus as part of Monday's agreement.
"So many people have gone with streams that are nothing more than slide shows because of the limitations of the technology," said Summus chief operating officer Dan Stansky.
Stansky said the as-yet unnamed software will improve the image quality and frame rate of streams created in both RealNetworks and WindowsMedia Player formats.
Before tuning in a Summus-enhanced stream, users will need to update their RealNetworks or Microsoft player software with a software plug-in.
The Irmo, South Carolina-based startup hopes to knock down distribution hurdles by not demanding consumers download a whole new viewer.
That might not be easy. Getting any software, even a small plug-in, installed on end user machines demands a serious commitment to marketing and distribution.
"We're competing with [RealNetworks' and Microsoft's] present software -- but we don't have to build the car from scratch," said Michael Cimino, president of High Speed Net Solutions.
Summus built its technology around "wavelet-compression" technology. That scheme -- also used by streaming company VDO -- was designed to more efficiently cope with the dropouts and lags that are part and parcel of streaming media over the Net.
"The size of file you have to send through with [current streaming technology] is the size of your car; the size we send through is the size of the CD player in your car," Cimino said.
"Wavelets can be very bandwidth scalable. They allow you to easily encode something for variety of different bit rates," said webcaster Thomas Edwards, president of streaming video site The Sync.
Edwards said that the degree to which Summus and Hi Speed Net Solutions can make any dent in a market dominated by two big players depends largely on how well the technology performs.
"The toughest thing is having streams go through the real world of the Internet -- dealing with the real Internet environment," he said.
"That's something that companies can only get good at through experience. And this is why I think RealNetworks has an advantage over a lot of other systems.
