Unit: Television and Media Production Services

Through a grant coordinated through Internet 2, Gallaudet University has received three VBrick 6000 Network Appliances on long-term loan. Each device encodes video using the same MPEG-2 standard employed by DVD and direct satellite broadcast to transmit video material over a standard IP network. The broadcast quality of the MPEG-2 video is particularly valuable in making digital video technology "sign language friendly".

Planned applications include high quality videoconferencing, distance education. streaming media (including live events and video-on-demand), remote interpreting. With the loan of the VBrick systems, Gallaudet's TV & Media Production Services will be working the Academic Technology, Gallaudet academic departments and off-campus partners to test these applications in local and national situations.

VBrick encoded programs may be viewed on standard television sets using hardware decoders included in the VBrick 6000 devices, or on any computer connected to the IP network using their StreamPlayerII software decoder. Line-21 closed captioning is currently supported by the hardware decoders and will be supported by the next release of the StreamPlayer software (due sometime during the summer of 2002).

For more information about the VBrick technology, see http://www.vbrick.com/Datasheet/VBrickFamilyBrochure.pdf.