Xing Technology was a live audio broadcast software company founded in

Arroyo Grande, California Arroyo Grande (Spanish language, Spanish for "Big Creek") is a city in San Luis Obispo County, California, San Luis Obispo County, California, United States. The population was 18,441 as of the 2020 census, up from 17,252 as of the 2010 Census. ...

in 1989 by former networking executive Howard Gordon.

History

Gordon founded Xing on the basis of a simple

JPEG JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and imag ...

decoding library that he had developed. It attracted the attention of Chris Eddy, who had developed a technique for processing Discrete cosine transforms (DCT) efficiently through software. Eddy's technique helped create the first Xing

MPEG The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by International Organization for Standardization, ISO and International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC that sets standards for media coding, includ ...

video player, a very simple

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

app that could play an

I-frame In the field of video compression a video frame is compressed using different algorithms with different advantages and disadvantages, centered mainly around amount of data compression. These different algorithms for video frames are called pict ...

-only MPEG video stream encoded with constant quantization, at 160x120 resolution. Over the next years, Xing expanded in several directions:

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

support for the XingMPEG player, a software MPEG audio decoder, a real-time ISA 160x120 MPEG capture board ( XingIt!), a

management system (

Picture Prowler Picture Prowler was an early piece of photo management software developed around and meant to show off Xing Technology's JPEG JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced ...

), and networking. Xing released a handful of network products before StreamWorks, the first streaming audio and video system for the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

, with support for both live and pre-encoded sources. RealVideo appeared in 1997 (just before StreamWorks), but at the time, the company behind the technology ( Progressive Networks) had only published

RealAudio RealAudio, or also spelled as Real Audio is a proprietary audio format developed by RealNetworks and first released in April 1995. It uses a variety of audio codecs, ranging from low-bitrate formats that can be used over dialup modems, to high-fid ...

and its flagship technology was primary for broadcasting audio. After the launch of StreamWorks, the company raised $5M in venture capital, but Progressive Networks (which was renamed "

RealNetworks RealNetworks, Inc. is a provider of artificial intelligence and computer vision based products. RealNetworks was a pioneer in Internet streaming software and services. They are based in Seattle, Washington, United States. The company also p ...

") raised considerably more in its

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

and acquired many of Xing's competitors (e.g.

Vivo Software Vivo Software was a pioneer internet streaming media company which was acquired by RealNetworks in March 1998. Vivo Software designed the ''Vivo Video/Audio platform'', including its encoding tools and end-user ''VivoActive Player''. The Vivo ...

). Despite that, Xing experienced a period of expansion through its "Audio Catalyst" MP3 software and "MP3 Grabber". In 1998, Xing partnered with SimplyTV to launch a service to offer near-broadcast quality

video on demand Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of o ...

. This service would require a 200 kilobits/s

broadband In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...

connection, which was not popular at that time. Forrester Research and RealNetwork were skeptical about its success. In 1999, RealNetwork acquired Xing.

References

External links

SoundOnSound.com Early adoption of StreamWorks by NBC

Findarticles.com: Harvard Law School Usage

Findarticles.com: Early use of Streamworks for live video webcasts

Findarticles.com: Xing releases first Mac MP3 Encoder
Defunct software companies of the United States Software companies established in 1989 Arroyo Grande, California Companies based in California Software companies disestablished in 1999 1989 establishments in California 1999 disestablishments in California

History

References

Further reading

External links