Cheetah Enters Video-Monitoring Hunt

Cheetah Technologies is launching its version of the V-Factor video-monitoring solution, which the company acquired from Symmetricom earlier this year.
Cheetah's V-Factor Stream Probe Advanced includes an "intelligent decode" feature, designed to measure the quality of encoded video as it leaves an operator's headend to detect anomalies such as blockiness, blackout, frozen video and jerkiness.
Competitors in the space include Mixed Signals -- acquired last month by Tektronix -- and IneoQuest Technologies.
The V-Factor Stream Probe Advanced system, which detects visual impairments using MPEG and IP analysis, is able to monitor up to 120 high-definition MPEG-2 video channels in a 2-rack-unit-high platform, according to Cheetah.
"The only way to ensure video quality is to ‘look' at the images," said Jeremy Bennington, vice president and general manager of Cheetah V-Factor. "‘Intelligent Decode' builds on more than 10 years of V-Factor technology and human vision research to enable the operator to see what the subscriber sees, and to proactively correct errors as quickly as possible."
Symmetricom in February 2010 announced the sale of its video-quality measurement business to Cheetah for $2.25 million in cash.
Privately held Cheetah, based in Pittsburgh, is owned by The Hawthorne Group and Rosetta Capital. The company's products offerings include test and measurement equipment for headends, voice over IP, DOCSIS and RF.