News
July 20, 2010
Cheetah Technologies announces the publication of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine Article:
Perceptual Quality Measurement—Towards a More Efficient
Process for Validating Objective Models
The Quality of Service Metrics (QoSM) Committee of the Alliance for Telecommunication Industry Standards (ATIS) Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) In teroperability Forum (IIF) is tasked with defining how objective quality metrics can provide meaningful IPTV performance measures. This group has reviewed current objective quality models as well as the processes by which such models are validated. This article describes current practices in validating objective quality models and presents a new, streamlined process that can be implemented to achieve more efficient and effective model validation. Of main interest for IPTV are models for predicting video and audiovisual quality; however, the process also applies to the validation of perceptual quality models (PQMs) for other modalities. The proposed process offers vendors a fast route to validating objective PQMs while providing industry with the assurance of independent, unbiased model evaluation. Read More...
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June 9, 2010
Cheetah Technologies Announces New V-Factor Stream Probe Advanced with Intelligent Decode
Industry’s most comprehensive single solution for IP, MPEG, Coding and Picture monitoring
Pittsburgh, PA – June 9, 2010 ̶ Cheetah Technologies, LP today announced immediate availability of its V-Factor® Stream Probe Advanced™ with “Intelligent Decode,” a breakthrough solution that enables cable system operators to achieve unprecedented accuracy and scalability in digital video monitoring.
The unique “Intelligent Decode” feature, the cornerstone of the latest release to Cheetah’s V-Factor Quality of Experience video monitoring platform, significantly enhances the ability of operators to measure the quality of encoded video as it leaves the headend by providing measurements for blockiness, blackout, frozen video and jerkiness that accurately match human observation.
"Intelligent Decode" allows operators to monitor up to 30-120 High-Definition MPEG-2 video channels post-encoder in a 1RU to 2RU platform with results that are objective and repeatable. Stream Probe Advanced (SPa) combines the ability to detect visual errors with MPEG and IP analysis. The “Intelligent Decode” functionality provides the industry’s most comprehensive single solution for IP, MPEG, Coding and Picture monitoring.
“The only way to ensure video quality is to ‘look’ at the images,” said Jeremy Bennington, vice president and general manager of Cheetah V-Factor. “’Intelligent Decode’ builds on more than 10 years of V-Factor technology and human vision research to enable the operator to see what the subscriber sees, and to proactively correct errors as quickly as possible.”
Cheetah’s V-Factor portfolio featuring the Stream Probes and the V-Factor Source Monitor™ is based on products and technologies recently acquired from Symmetricom, Inc. V-Factor’s Human Vision System enables operators to detect, isolate and troubleshoot video providing accurate and repeatable measurements on how the video content actually appears to viewers.
The V-Factor Source Monitor (VF-SM) analyzes multiple HD or SD video streams as they are received in a headend to benchmark, identify trends and poor quality events before an operator packages the video for distribution. In addition to providing valuable objective monitoring data to complement existing validation relying on Golden Eyes, V-Factor SM ideally automates tasks which previously relied solely on human observation—such as video equipment qualification or competitive analysis between existing video services.
V-Factor Stream Probe Advanced is used after the video has been encoded, transcoded, muxed and processed for network transmission. VF-SPa is critical to not only analyzing the IP and MPEG aspects of the video, but also ensuring that no visual impairments have been introduced by the operator while processing the video. V-Factor Stream Probe™ Standard (VF-SPs) offers a comprehensive analysis of IP, MPEG and MPEG video coding layer attributes to ensure any network transmission trends and events are reported. VF-SPs is typically deployed in the network, hub sites, and can also be embedded in edge derives and set-top boxes.
About Cheetah Technologies
With a long history in Network and Video Quality Management, Cheetah Technologies has raised the bar in status, performance and quality monitoring while pioneering new ground in IP service testing and performance analysis. Cheetah Technologies solutions allow network operators to more efficiently and cost effectively isolate and troubleshoot multi-layered problems that impact service quality. Information about Cheetah's products and services can be found at www.cheetahtech.com. Cheetah Technologies is a privately held company which is owned by the Pittsburgh based investment firms The Hawthorne Group and Rosetta Capital. The Hawthorne Group is an investment and management company with holdings in the communications, railroad, assisted living, soft drink bottling, and real estate businesses. Rosetta Capital focuses on acquiring operating businesses in service industries and niche manufacturing.
Contacts:
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Cheetah Technologies, L.P.
412-923-3486
Sales@Cheeetahtech.com
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PSPR, Inc. for Cheetah Technologies, L.P.
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News Coverage - June 9, 2010
Troubleshooting Video Quality Problems Before Or At Headends
Communications Technology By Linda Hardesty
June 9, 2010 ̶ There seem to be a plethora of test-and-measurement companies vying for cable business lately. Why the uptick?
The migration from analog to digital networks has created new needs for quality assurance, according to Jeremy Bennington, VP/GM of Cheetah V-Factor at Cheetah Technologies.
“In the analog days, you just put color bars up and put through a waveform monitor or vectorscope; if the pattern looked good, you were all set. If not, it was easier to find the issues than in a digital world,” said Bennington. "In the digital world, we don't have the same types of tests. We have to make sure the signal got from point A to point B, and that the quality was maintained in the process in the packet world."
The other reason for more vigorous interest in video quality assurance is competition.
"It's really important for the industry to look at quality as a key metric," Bennington added. "Competing on price with satellite and telcos is not a game that anybody wins."
While other monitoring companies appear to be averse to the terms "test and measurement," Cheetah Technologies is fine with those words.
"Test and measurement is what we do," said Steve Santamaria, EVP/business development with Cheetah.
Cheetah’s portfolio is based on products and technologies recently acquired from Symmetricom. In a 2007 study of cable-operator video quality commissioned by Symmetricom and conducted by Multimedia Research Group that surveyed executives from nine of the Top 20 U.S. MSOs, 61.9 percent of respondents said they found out about video quality problems via customer phone calls. Only 31 percent said they used network-monitoring tools to discover quality problems.
Regarding the genesis of video quality problems, respondents also said 50 percent of digital video trouble came from customer premises equipment. Headend issues were second, at 19.5 percent, followed by edge/node at 14.9 percent; other issues comprised the balance.
Sometimes video quality is degraded as it gets transported from content owners to the operators' headends, said Bennington, and sometimes problems occur at the headend, such as snow on the satellite before the content is packaged.
Today, Cheetah Technologies announced the availability of V-Factor Stream Probe Advanced with “Intelligent Decode” to enhance the ability of operators to measure the quality of encoded video as it leaves the headend by providing measurements for “blockiness,” blackout, frozen video and jerkiness that accurately match human observation.
The Intelligent Decode feature of V-Factor allows operators to monitor anywhere from 30 to 120 high-definition MPEG-2 video channels (post-encoder) in a 1RU to 2RU platform with results the company said are “objective and repeatable.” Stream Probe Advanced combines the ability to detect visual errors with MPEG and IP analysis.
“The only way to ensure video quality is to ‘look’ at the images,” said Bennington. “Intelligent Decode builds on more than 10 years of V-Factor technology and human vision research to enable the operator to see what the subscriber sees and to proactively correct errors as quickly as possible.”
Other monitoring solutions "ensure bits and bytes get from point A to point B. We model the human eye," added Santamaria.
Back to TopNews Coverage - June 9, 2010
Cheetah Offers Advanced Video Monitoring
CED Magazine By Brian Santo
June 9, 2010 ̶ Cheetah Technologies has introduced a new cable network monitoring system that checks the visual quality of video, as well as the integrity of MPEG and IP streams.
Cheetah’s V-Factor Stream Probe Advanced (VF-SPa) includes what the company is calling Intelligent Decode, which measures for blockiness, blackout, frozen video and jerkiness that accurately match human observation as video leaves the headend.
Intelligent Decode allows operators to monitor 30 to 120 high-definition MPEG-2 video channels post-encoder (1RU or 2RU, depending on stream capacity) with results Cheetah says are objective and repeatable.
The system will look at the quality of the video coming in to the headend, to ensure that the source signal is good, and also at the quality of the video leaving the headend (or hub) to make sure what’s being sent out is good Click here!. What sets the system apart, Cheetah says, is the abilities associated with Intelligent Decode.
“Our system also looks at the video,” said Jeremy Bennington, vice president and general manager of Cheetah V-Factor. “We can say what the subscriber saw. That’s our differentiation.”
He added, “Intelligent Decode builds on more than 10 years of V-Factor technology and human vision research to enable the operator to see what the subscriber sees, and to proactively correct errors as quickly as possible.”
Cheetah got into the monitoring segment with the acquisition of Symmetricom’s video monitoring business in February.
Bennington cited data compiled by Symmetricom that revealed that 43 percent of the video quality problems are in-home; in other words, they affect a single customer.
Twenty percent, however, are problems in the headend. These are the problems that not only could affect the most subscribers (every single viewer served by that headend), but they are also the problems that operators can most readily address by identifying and rectifying them, Bennington explained.
The V-Factor Source Monitor (VF-SM) analyzes multiple HD or SD video streams as they are received in a headend to benchmark and identify trends and poor-quality events before an operator packages the video for distribution. In addition to providing valuable objective monitoring data to complement existing validation relying on Golden Eyes, VF-SM ideally automates tasks, which previously relied solely on human observation – such as video equipment qualification or competitive analysis between existing video services.
V-Factor Stream Probe Advanced is used after the video has been encoded, transcoded, muxed and processed for network transmission. VF-SPa is critical to not only analyzing the IP and MPEG aspects of the video, but also ensuring that no visual impairments have been introduced by the operator while processing the video. V-Factor Stream Probe Standard (VF-SPs) offers a comprehensive analysis of IP, MPEG and MPEG video coding layer attributes to ensure any network transmission trends and events are reported. VF-SPs is typically deployed in the network and hub sites, and it can also be embedded in edge drives and set-top boxes.
Bennington said the company is preparing a product that will be able to evaluate video quality closer to the edge – all the way to the set-top box – for release sometime in July.
Back to TopNews Coverage - June 9, 2010
Cheetah Enters Video-Monitoring Hunt
Vendor Launches V-Factor Solution Acquired From Symmetricom
Multichannel News By Todd Spangler
une 9, 2010 ̶ Cheetah Technologies is launching its version of the V-Factor video-monitoring solution, which the company acquired from Symmetricom earlier this year.
Cheetah's V-Factor Stream Probe Advanced includes an "intelligent decode" feature, designed to measure the quality of encoded video as it leaves an operator's headend to detect anomalies such as blockiness, blackout, frozen video and jerkiness.
Competitors in the space include Mixed Signals -- acquired last month by Tektronix -- and IneoQuest Technologies.
The V-Factor Stream Probe Advanced system, which detects visual impairments using MPEG and IP analysis, is able to monitor up to 120 high-definition MPEG-2 video channels in a 2-rack-unit-high platform, according to Cheetah.
"The only way to ensure video quality is to ‘look' at the images," said Jeremy Bennington, vice president and general manager of Cheetah V-Factor. "‘Intelligent Decode' builds on more than 10 years of V-Factor technology and human vision research to enable the operator to see what the subscriber sees, and to proactively correct errors as quickly as possible."
Symmetricom in February 2010 announced the sale of its video-quality measurement business to Cheetah for $2.25 million in cash.
Privately held Cheetah, based in Pittsburgh, is owned by The Hawthorne Group and Rosetta Capital. The company's products offerings include test and measurement equipment for headends, voice over IP, DOCSIS and RF.
Back to TopFebruary 15, 2010
Cheetah Technologies Announces Acquisition of Symmetricom’s Video Quality Monitoring Business
Empowers Providers to Monitor End-to-End Video Quality at Video’s Deepest Layer – In Real-time and on Any Screen
Pittsburgh, PA - Cheetah Technologies, LP, a leader in HFC network performance and monitoring, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Symmetricom’s (NASDAQ: SYMM) Video Quality Monitoring Business – a leading provider of video quality, performance and monitoring software. Today’s acquisition extends Cheetah’s powerful solutions for real-time voice, video and data quality of service and performance monitoring. The transaction is expected to close in late February, subject to customary closing conditions.
Adding the Video Quality Monitoring solution builds upon an already successful monitoring platform. Cheetah Technologies’ network management solutions are deployed in more than 25 countries and manage hundreds of thousands of network devices. The resulting outcome of the combined businesses will help network service providers unify their network monitoring, deploy a unique and innovative origination-to-edge monitoring fabric and improve quality monitoring capabilities, offering video consumers a best-in-class video experience.
“Consumers of entertainment-grade video have high expectations of virtually perfect video quality. As a result, our customers are becoming much more sophisticated in developing their companywide video monitoring strategies. They are looking for unified tools and processes to help them monitor the video quality across their entire network more effectively – from source to consumer experience,” said Cheetah’s Steve John, Chief Executive Officer. “With the Video Quality Monitoring Business, we’re gaining a market-leading solution, giving customers the power to dive deep into video packets throughout every key part of their network and resulting in the best video experience on any screen for their customers. Cheetah now offers the strongest and most complete combination of source to experience unified network monitoring tools on the market today.”
Formally part of the Telecom Solutions Division of Symmetricom, the Video Quality Monitoring platform enables carriers, Internet service providers and cable operators to understand how their actual video service quality is perceived by end-users. Knowing in real-time the quality of the video offerings end-to-end is critical for assuring customer satisfaction and avoiding churn. With over $30 million invested in the Video Quality Monitoring Business, it has been deployed or is in trials with twenty-one MSOs, Telcos, programmers and communication technology providers. The group has also inked strategic partnership and/or reseller agreements with Ericsson, HP, Alcatel-Lucent, IBM and is part of Microsoft’s Mediaroom Ecosystem.
Under the terms of the agreement, Cheetah Technologies will purchase all assets of the Video Quality Monitoring Business including the technology and intellectual property for $2.25 million. The transaction is subject to normal closing requirements and should close by the end of February. Walt Ungerer of Corporate Game Plan acted as strategic M&A advisor to Cheetah Technologies.
For more information download the following press releases:Cheetah Technologies, L.P. Press Release (pdf 108KB)
Symmetricom Press Release (pdf 288KB)
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Dec. 15, 2009
New Management Team
Thank you for your continued support and partnership during our transition to a new ownership and executive management team at Cheetah Technologies. We acquired the Cheetah cable status and performance monitoring line from Tollgrade Communications this past summer - and we are now operating as Cheetah Technologies, L.P. Members of the new leadership team include cable veterans Steve Santamaria-EVP, Earl Hershey-Chief Architect, and Jim McCall-VP of Operations.
For almost twenty years, Cheetah products have set the standard in HFC network management solutions throughout the world. Our #1 priority is to deliver exceptional performance to our customers through our network assurance host software, node, end-of-line and power supply monitoring devices, FCC 24-hour proof testing equipment, DOCSIS based transponders, power supply management applications and the industry’s first VoIP Call Quality Management system.
We look forward to offering a greater level of service, capabilities and communication as we strive to exceed your expectations in everything we do. Please let us know how we can help you increase network reliability, reduce truck rolls and lower operational costs as we work together to develop innovative, next generation products.
Have a wonderful holiday season and please don’t hesitate to contact us if we can ever be of any service.
Stephen JohnPresident - CEO
Cheetah Technologies, L.P.
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