demand content or live video streams, select a stream, and begin viewing television-quality video. Set-Top Box users can also record video directly on the ETV Portal Server using the remote control or the wireless keyboard.
VBrick Encoders/Decoders
VBrick's VB4000-5000-6000 Series MPEG-2 network video appliances provide DVD quality video and CD quality audio at 1–15 Mbps of bandwidth. MPEG-2 is the world's most popular digital compression technology and is used to encode DVDs as well as Digital Cable and Digital Satellite broadcasts. VBrick's VB4000-5000-6000 Series MPEG-4 encoders and decoders are versatile and reliable video appliances for one or two-way interactive communications over low or medium bandwidth IP networks. The VBrick MPEG-4 encoder/decoder can be used for webcasting, multicasting, transcoding, and two-way interactive video. Designed for streaming over the Internet at lower bit rates (56K, 128K, 384K0 and over a LAN at higher rates (1Mbps and above).
Additional Portal Server Components
The ETV Network Video Recorder and the ETV Live Portal Server are optional components that are purchased and installed separately. They have different license files that must be installed separately. See Portal Server License Files on page 7.
ETV Network Video Recorder
The ETV Network Video Recorder lets you off-load all recording tasks from the ETV Portal Server machine to a separate "recorder server" machine. This optimizes recording performance as well as ETV Portal Server performance. The Network Video Recorder uses ETV Portal Server components and requires two machines: the ETV Portal Server is installed on one machine; the Network Video Recorder software is installed on a different machine. Once installed, the NVR machine is used for all ETV Portal Server recording tasks. The NVR has no GUI and runs continually as a background service. You simply install the NVR software and change the Recorder Server configuration to match the new server. See the ETV Network Video Recorder Release Notes for more details and installation instructions.
Note A standard ETV Portal Server permits two concurrent recording operations. If you
purchase and install a Network Video Recorder, the number of concurrent recording operations is fixed by the terms of your licensing agreement with VBrick.
ETV Live Portal Server
The ETV Live Portal Server provides ETV functionality that is limited to scheduling and viewing live streams. It does not integrate with a VoD server and there is no functionality for browsing the video library.
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