IPtec Provides High-Quality Video from Remote Locations

By Zoe Francis, Hacienda Network Staff Writer

The next time you watch a high-definition broadcast from a star-studded Hollywood awards show or a high-stakes sporting event, you can thank the engineers at IPtec for making the picture crystal clear.

IPtec, Inc., makes devices that transform video signals from cameras so that they can be transmitted over the Internet while maintaining outstanding quality.

"It's an adaptation box," president Steffen Rasmussen said of the company's products. "One side of our product interfaces with the real world. For instance, signals from a television camera. The other side interfaces into the Internet or a computer network."

The company was founded in 2008 by Rasmussen and two other engineers eager to tackle an emerging market that serves the broadcast industry, medical field and the military. Product development is done in Hacienda, while the actual devices are made in Fremont.

"It's an American-built product," he boasted. "It's popular that it's a U.S.-based company and everything is made here."

The devices IPtec makes are relatively small - 8 inches across, 12 inches deep and only an inch high. Broadcast firms, such as TV studios, use IPtec devices to easily and efficiently get high-quality video shot on location into the studio for broadcast.

In the past, TV studios did remote broadcasts by taking a huge truck loaded with expensive equipment and dozens of people to an event site to shoot video and process it for on-air viewing.

"That's a very expensive ordeal," Rasmussen noted. "They already have a television studio back in their facilities, so why not take all the camera feeds back to those people? They save the money of having a very expensive truck go out for outside broadcasting to make content on the spot."

Medical facilities use IPtec products for high-resolution viewings of operating room procedures.

"If you have 30 students, you don't want to have them in the operating room," he said. "The benefit is that you don't have 30 people who bring germs into the operating room. They can watch the operating room from a distance to see what's going on. They can watch a real-time operation and communicate real time with the surgeon."

The crucial aspect of IPtec's products is that video quality is maintained as signals are transmitted from one location to another.

"In order for someone to sit far away and see everything, you need very high resolution," Rasmussen said. The devices "can take very high-quality video and format it so it can maintain its high quality and be transmitted across the Internet. Quality is the key word here. You don't lose all the quality."

The U.S. military is a growing segment of IPtec's market. The military uses the products to transmit both video and sophisticated data from devices such as airplanes and missiles.

The key to IPtec's success in a competitive market is that the company's products are flexible, easily updated with new software and easy to use.

"We can send out new software that can make it do new things," Rasmussen said. "The second part to that is to make it easy for the users so they can do it on the fly. The third part is that we make products that are very reliable and very low energy consuming, so it's a green product. You have to come up with ways you can differentiate yourself in how to use the product and flexibilities in the product to make it easy and simple and cost effective for them to use."

For more information about IPtec, visit iptec-inc.com.

Photo: Michael Aarup, Chief Technology Officer, IPtec located in Hacienda

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