Technology

The synthetrick platform

The synthetrick platform is the distributed system that allows the deployment of interactive synthetic video channels. It moves the complexity of applications to the server side, keeping the client as light and simple as possible. Terminal devices that consume syntheractive services only need a standard video decoder and the client application that sends commands back to the server.

The synthetrick platform is highly optimized to enable massive generation of synthetic video streams with an affordable cost (see the section about scalability).

Why syntheractive?

There are many reasons that make the synthetrick platform interesting for you, whether you are a TV operator, a content creator or a final user.

Benefits for the operator

Increase the life expectancy of your hardware. These old STB's are now capable to run interactive multiuser applications with high quality 3D graphics.
Offer powerful interactive applications on TV for your customers.
Reduce the cost of maintenance at the user home. No need to replace or upgrade boxes, no need to perform firmware updates. Once the synthetrick client is operational, all the maintenance is performed on the server side.

Benefits for the content creator

Break the limits of STB. Develop fancy applications in a powerful environment. Avoid ridiculous restrictions to the appearance and behaviour of your interactive applications.
Develop once, deploy everywhere. Don't bother about what client device your applications will be consumed on. Once they are in the syntheractive catalog, they will be available for any synthetrick client, which includes virtually any STB, smart TV, mobile phone, or any other device with video decoding capabilities. It can also be installed on different environments, including IPTV, OTT, DVB-C and DVB-T.
Advanced features such as inter-session communications for multi-user applications, persistent storage, 3D high-quality graphics, character animation, physical simulation and much more.
Multiple visualization modes. Your interactive application will be available in different visualization modes, including High Definition and 3D stereoscopic, without additional development. Just focus on your contents and let the synthetrick platform do its magic.
Reduce development time. Develop the applications in your favourite environment (Visual Studio, Eclipse, Codeblocks, ...). Integrate with 3D content creation tools (Maya, 3ds Max, Blender, ...). Forget about embarrasing and excesively constrained development environments reduced to one specific hardware platform. Development environment can be Windows, Linux or Mac.
Avoid piracy. As a content creator, you may be worried about the protection of your digital assets. With synthetrick, these assets will never be in the client device, so copying or reverse engineering them is impossible. The final user just receives the video stream of the interactive session.

Benefits for the final user

Enjoy cutting-edge 3D applications in your TV set without changing your box.
If you have a Smart TV, you even need no box to run the applications.
Combine your TV watching experience with new interactive services. Remain connected to your social networks, receive alerts on information you're interested in and much more, with no need for additional devices.
Anywhere, anytime. Access the interactive contents from any device, wherever you are.
Security. No data losses, no computer viruses, no data corruption. Everything is in the cloud, not in your client device. The content provider keeps it safe for you.
Comfort. Avoid big, noisy, power hungry and heat generating devices in your home.

Scalability

synthetrick is highly optimized to generate a massive amount of concurrent interactive sessions at an affordable cost. The key concepts in its architecture are scalability and performance. It has a highly optimized real-time rendering and encoding engine, taking advantage of the huge computer power of modern GPUs.

syntheractive services are designed to exploit this architecture, sharing resources among sessions and optimizing the operations to amortize them for the sessions in each node.

A distributed control system optimizes resource management in a cluster of video generation nodes. We can generate hundreds of concurrent sessions per node for a typical syntheractive service.

For all these reasons, synthetrick offers a very competitive cost per session or interactive stream, in terms of hardware infrastructure, power consumption, physical space and maintenance needs.