For the second time in six years, Waterloo-based SSIMWAVE has been honoured with a Technology and Engineering Emmy Award for its groundbreaking work in television video quality.
SSIMWAVE’s latest honour, announced today, brings to four the number of engineering Emmys snagged by Waterloo Region scale-up companies in recent years. Dejero, whose networking technology enables live video broadcasts at low cost, won Emmys in 2019 and 2020.
SSIMWAVE’s measurement technology enables providers of traditional TV and streaming companies to deliver top quality video to viewers at lower cost, by “seeing” the video the way a subscriber would see it.
In 2015, SSIMWAVE co-founder and Chief Science Officer Zhou Wang was presented with an Engineering Emmy for his role in inventing the structural similarity (SSIM) video quality measurement model. The latest SSIMWAVE Emmy is for its development of perceptual metrics for video encoding optimization.
“SSIMWAVE has 18 patents in the sphere of video quality, including for optimization, and its solutions are improving the viewer experience for more than 130 million subscribers around the world,” the company said in a news release, adding that it is working with top providers of subscription-based video-on-demand services to help them optimize their content libraries for top-quality viewing.
The technology “allows video providers total control over the viewer experience, consistent delivery for any type of video content, and optimization of the bitrates of every encode and every title,” so that excellent video can be delivered using only as much bandwidth as is needed, saving costs.
“All of us at SSIMWAVE are honoured that the broadcasters, programmers, cable operators and other members of the National Academy’s Technology & Entertainment Achievement Committee have recognized the engineering creativity and impact of our efforts to help the industry optimize bitrates, reduce delivery costs and improve viewer experiences,” said Abdul Rehman, the company’s CEO, CTO and co-founder.
The award is scheduled to be presented at the 72nd annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards Ceremony, tentatively expected to be a virtual event on Sunday, Oct. 10 in partnership with the National Association of Broadcasters Show conference.
