Established in May 2003, Unreal Streaming Technologies boasts headquarters in both Atlanta and Los Angeles. Focusing on network streaming technology, the company’s Unreal IP Media Server can be seamlessly integrated with Windows operating systems, powering both live and on demand streaming capabilities.

Boasting the functionalities needed to fully support Flash player, Silverlight, Windows Media Player and Unreal Streaming Media Player on Windows, MAC, Linux and Mobile devices, the IP media server offers two distinct streaming delivery modes: Near-Real-Time and Buffered.

According to company officials, conferencing applications that depend on low latency can leverage the 0.2 - 2 seconds latency provided by Near-Real-Time mode. In scenarios in which low latency is not required, Buffered mode can be used, which allows the servers to buffer media in order to eliminate network jitter and congestion.

Live media sources that can take advantage of this IP media server include: USB/Firewire digital cameras, IP network cameras, microphones, TV-tuner cards, analog video sources (analog camera or TV) connected to Graphics card, Video Capture cards and hardware encoder appliances that supports DirectShow interface. In addition, several live sources can be hosted on only one computer and hardware-encoded content can be streamed without the need for software transcoding.

Additionally, some of the codecs that can be utilized for live video compression are VC1 (WMV9), H.264 and Microsoft MPEG-4 V2, while codecs used for live audio compression are Fraunhofer (News - Alert) MPEG Layer-3 (MP3), AAC, GSM 6.10 and WMA.

First Med Faculty of Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic implemented this innovative technology in order to stream surgeons within the operating room, while keeping the environment completely sterile and allowing students to see what they are learning about in the classroom in real life.

“This brings a whole new perspective on the practical teaching of medical students. By broadcasting live images from the diagnostic and operating equipment (ultrasound, laparoscopic camera) to the lecture hall, we can achieve comparable quality of teaching to what we would get with direct presence of students in the operating room,” a case study revealed.