ATLANTA – Oct. 8, 2019 – VITEC, a worldwide leader in advanced video encoding and streaming solutions, today announced its MGW Ace Encoder and Decoder were successfully installed at Life Church and its four satellite campuses in Memphis, Tenn. Part of VITEC's Houses of Worship Solution, the MGW Ace Encoder and Decoder allow the church to live stream its services from the main campus to its satellite locations easily, affordably, and in the highest quality with perfect synchronization, providing an enhanced video delivery that truly engages followers.
"The two most important things for us when we were looking for a streaming platform were reliability and performance," said Brian Pitre, Life Church's Creative Director. "VITEC, without a doubt, delivers on both. It's been more than a year, and we have not had a single issue. That's a testament of VITEC's absolutely flawless technology."
Life Church's yearslong search for a streaming solution that would easily and reliably record a high-quality broadcast video from the main location and stream it live to multiple satellite locations simultaneously without errors and with delayed playback ended with VITEC. Well-known in the house of worship market, VITEC utilizes cutting-edge HEVC encoding technology and the industry-leading Zixi™ error-free streaming protocol to seamlessly and reliably transmit multiple independent IP streams in high quality to churches of any size over the existing IP infrastructure. At each Life Church location, the MGW Ace Encoder and Decoder were successfully installed. The Ace Encoder features VITEC's next-generation HEVC (H.265) compression, which reduces network bandwidth by up to 50% compared to H.264. Because it supports both HEVC and H.264, it's built for the future without losing support for legacy receivers and decoders. The MGW Ace Decoder's unique, flexible, 4K-capable FPGA architecture provides a future-proof solution and ensures multisite live streaming on private or public networks. When paired with MGW Ace Encoder, the set becomes an end-to-end streaming solution that affordably transmits bandwidth-efficient, artifact-free, time-synchronized video and playback that meet the demands for streamed worship services.
Another factor that played into Life Church's decision was the seamless integration of VITEC's house of worship streaming solution with Renewed Vision™ ProVideoServer™ (PVS), a four-channel HD video server from the most trusted technology provider in the worship space. PVS enhances the VITEC system with recording, playback, and time-slip capabilities. This combination allows Life Church to easily record its high-quality broadcast stream with embedded timecode and multichannel audio and play it back with the necessary delay at each of the satellite campuses at any time, even as it records.
"The latest advances in technology have allowed Life Church to expand their reach, but they needed a high-quality and reliable streaming solution to build a truly connected community," said Mark Robison, Broadcast Solutions Specialist, VITEC. "With VITEC's scalable streaming solutions, now staff or volunteers don't have to worry about glitches disrupting the service or relying on previously recorded services to fill the slot. They can enjoy an error-free, distraction-free environment where they can home in on one live message that is shared with the entire Life Church family."
