The investments don’t stop rolling in for burgeoning virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) startups, and now Tiledmedia have secured investments worth more than €2 million EUR for their high quality VR streaming technology.
Tiledmedia teamed up with Sky and Ericsson last year to showcase VR for live sports, and it’s that technology which investors have found so interesting.
The technology uses an untethered VR head-mounted display (HMD) and they demonstrated users being able to experience the speed and intense manoeuvres that Formula 3 drivers undertake when they come close and perform frightening overtakes.
Tiledmedia had six investors, Emerce reports, led by Paul Hendriks, former CTO and CIO at Ziggo and AVG Technologies. Tiledmedia will be using the investment for the development of their tech, the variety of experiences available, and expansion of their marketing, in addition to attracting quality industry veterans to the company.
Tiledmedia’s encoding technology can reduce bandwidth for VR video by 80%, making it an incredibly attractive prospect, as videos will be easier to stream over the internet, and higher quality video will be easily streamable from slower WiFi routers.
Tiledmedia CEO Frits Klok believes in the potential of VR video, and thinks streaming is the future; “VR is only commercially interesting if you can stream it. YouTube also does not work if you first have to wait for a download. Streaming VR at good quality just costs too much bandwidth at the moment. Our products solve that problem. World leaders such as Akamai, Ericsson and Harmonic have recognized this.”
Hendrinks is convinced of Tiledmedia’s importance to the VR space, and he clearly hopes for the company to grow much larger; “Tiledmedia technology is crucial for the success of the VR market. It delivers much higher quality, substantially lower costs and a much larger reach among consumers. The [investors] believe in technology and in the enthusiastic leadership team that has a lot of technological talent, great business experience and an impressive international network. With this investment, Tiledmedia can start the next phase of innovation and growth in this dynamic market.”
It certainly sounds like Tiledmedia has a promising future. For all of the latest on their growth and VR market in general, make sure to stay on VRFocus.
The demonstration will use custom untethered VR headsets along with tablets that will be synced to a TV screen for real-time viewing.