Giraffic Accelerates OTT Video On Samsung TVs

Israel-based video tech specialist Giraffic said it has notched a deal to equip 2014 Samsung smart TVs and Blu-ray models with acceleration technology that results in faster and smoother video streaming.

Giraffic said it’s supplying Samsung with Adaptive Video Accelerator (AVA) technology that, it claims, can eliminate video rebuffering of video streams and pump up big downloads.

Giraffic’s data acceleration protocol, which is now being packed into those Samsung products, doesn’t fiddle with the content or its formatting, but essentially works as a video streaming “magnet,” capable of pulling video and other content to the device at a faster rate, said Giraffic CEO Yoel Zanger.

He said any OTT service or app delivered to those devices, whether it’s from Hulu, Amazon, Vimeo or Netflix, will benefit from that acceleration and receive a sizable performance gain, he said. While that can help to smooth out the delivery of HD streaming, the technique will become more important and pronounced as more and more 4K content becomes available for streaming and downloading, Zanger said.

By way of example, Giraffic claims that its AVA tech has shown to more than double the throughput of un-accelerated devices – from 6.5 Mbps to 14.5 Mbps.

So, how does the company pull off that magic trick? Zanger said Giraffic’s client-side system analyzes the bit rate, the home networking environment and other parameters within the last mile that can impact the viewer, and optimizes the connection and its throughput based on that data.

Samsung is the first announced customer for the tech firm’s AVA technology, but Giraffic claims to have other deals in queue. Giraffic , founded in 2008, has raised about $6 million and set up shop in the U.S. earlier this year.