The Sinclair Library at the University of Hawaii at Manoa maintains the only extensive archive of television broadcasts about Hawaii in the state. The library, which for decades relied on videotapes and VCRs, recently switched to a SnapStream Server to ensure the integrity and longevity of its media collection.

The Challenge
In the past, student workers at the library selected broadcasts from published TV listings — and did the taping, quality, and pre-cataloging checks manually, which required hours of work and thousands of videotapes. “We can’t buy Super VHS tape quality anymore. The VCR is obsolete,” explains RuthMarie Quirk, manager of operations at Sinclair Library, who sought a digital solution.

The Solution

After two months of testing, the library in October 2009 deployed a 10-tuner SnapStream Server with 4 terabytes of storage as its exclusive TV-recording device. “SnapStream replaced the prior system completely,” Quirk says. “We save money on supplies [video tapes], and we can search for shows just by looking for the term ‘Hawaii.’ It saves hours of student work each week.”

“The entire process of setting up recordings and processing recorded shows is much easier and faster with SnapStream,” says Emily Albarillo, the digital media specialist.

“Having the shows in a digital format will make them easier to access in the future and also makes viewing much simpler. Storage also takes much less physical space compared to stacks of VHS tapes.”

We announced Current TV as a SnapStream customer earlier today (press release copied below).

If you've never watched Infomania, it's a look back on the week in media, similar in form to The Soup on E! and Best Week Ever on VH1/MTV (both shows that also run off of our TV search technology).

One of the segments that Infomania does that I'm a big fan of is "Target Women" with Sarah Haskins. Hilarious stuff.

The press release:

Current TV and infoMania Install SnapStream, Replace “Messy” DVR Setup

Houston, TX (PRWEB) February 10, 2010 -- SnapStream Media, Inc., announced today that infoMania, the half-hour satirical news show that airs on Current TV, has installed a six-tuner SnapStream Server to record, search, and grab video clips for usage in their weekly commentary. Launched in 2007, the SnapStream Server is a turn-key television search appliance that enables organizations to record and store thousands of hours of television and then search inside those recordings by keywords and phrases.

Each week, the infoMania crew strives to put a humorous spin on media trends, routinely using video clips from TV and the Web to illustrate jokes. When the show debuted in 2008, staffers were doing a lot of extra work to track down footage.
Current now uses SnapStream to make infoMania. SnapStream’s technology allows infoMania to record six shows simultaneously and store hundreds of hours of television. Its producers can then quickly locate the desired footage by keyword. The biggest gain, says global senior broadcast engineer Dave Simon, is the ability to find content fast. "SnapStream was the first system we looked at that had the ability to record and search closed-captioning," Simon says. "To a television operation like infoMania, that is paramount."

In addition, Current Media, the corporation that owns and produces infoMania, has installed a second SnapStream Server for media monitoring in their San Francisco office.

“Their selection of SnapStream to not only produce infoMania, but also to monitor media mentions of the company itself, as well as create content for their corporate video and news feeds, speaks volumes about the power and capabilities behind the SnapStream Server solution,” said Rakesh Agrawal, SnapStream’s CEO and Founder.

Visit the http://www.snapstream.com/ website to learn more about SnapStream's affordable and effective TV search technology - our turn-key TV search appliances starting at $2,000.

About SnapStream Media, Inc.

SnapStream allows organizations to put their finger on the pulse of traditional television. Customers can record a virtually unlimited number of TV shows from satellite, cable or antenna and then search inside those TV shows to pinpoint television content of interest. Existing customers include government organizations, such as the U.S. Senate and the City of New York, to educational institutions at the university and K-12 level to entertainment organizations such as Comcast Entertainment, Current TV, and MTV.

As my team is in the field showing off our ability to search television for mentions of interest, we occasionally field questions about the variety of applications for the data. In general, SnapStream customers are able to search, clip and distribute content of interest from a single user interface. Using closed captioning, SnapStream brings a user directly to any mention of interest within a recorded broadcast. Occasionally, especially in a University or Public Relations setting, the topic turns to statistical analysis. While our solution does not currently offer a statistical engine, the data is easily exported for analysis.

Politics aside, I have downloaded the closed-caption text from Wednesday night's (January 27, 2010) State of the Union. Using the word cloud creator at Wordle.net, I quickly created the above symbolic representation of the speech. The 75-minute speech generated over 7,000 words, of which, the top 200 are represented in the cloud. Wordle.net has the option to remove "common" words – looks to be mostly prepositions, conjunctions and pronouns - to get at the meat of the text . The more appearances a word makes in the text, the larger the word is portrayed in the cloud. The top five words from the speech were People, Americans, Year, Jobs and Work. The overall process took less than 5 minutes - in fact, it took considerably less time than creating this post. ;-)
For customers that are currently using our television search solution, here is a guide to the process. First, locate the video content by searching (or browsing, in this case) within the user interface. If the topic of interest is short, you can use the clipping feature to "trim" down the Closed Caption transcript - when clipping video, SnapStream automatically trims the closed caption transcript as well, so the clip is also searchable. Browse the library for the show or clip, and instead of playing the file, choose "Download Transcript" from the about program page. A dialog will open asking where you want to save the text file of the transcript. The only massaging required is to remove the timestamps, which can be done in any text editor. Copy the text to Wordle.net's create engine and sit back to admire your work.

How did we learn of this capability? Interestingly enough, a customer turned us on to the ability during last years election. Ultimately, the goal was statistical analysis of candidate speeches - the cloud representation was just a by-product. We are never ceased to be amazed at the uses customers find for our products.

(First time visitors: Welcome to SnapStream! We make TV search software used by organizations, like the Daily Show, to search inside TV shows. And it's not too expensive, starting at $2,000. Read on or learn more about our products.)

At SnapStream we’ve been hanging onto every word uttered on traditional TV by talking heads and news anchors on major network channels. The data we gathered with SnapStream TV Trends in 2009 gave us an exciting glimpse of the year in television.

In case you're new here, you might be wondering, "What is SnapStream TV Trends?" It's a service we run that lets you see how often words are mentioned, over time, on national TV news. We record and analyze transcripts from national TV news programs on ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, MSNBC and CNN and it's all powered by SnapStream's TV search technology.

Here’s a look at some of the trends we saw on TV in 2009:

Top TV News Trends

This probably comes as no surprise to anyone: the death of Michael Jackson was easily the most spiky news of the year. In the month between June 26, the day after the King of Pop died, and July 25, “Michael Jackson” was mentioned more than ten times as often as “Obama” in television news.

Overall, the top ten spiking terms in television this year:

See their TV Trends graphs: Iran, Michael Jackson, Swine Flu, North Korea, AIG, Pirates, Hamas, (The) Inauguration, Ted Kennedy, and Balloon (boy).

Twitter: the leading social network... on TV

In 2009, Twitter became a staple of traditional television -- as channel for two way communication, as a source of breaking news, and simply as a source for what people were saying about a particular topic.

Search for “Twitter” in Snapstream TV Trends and you’ll see that news and current events TV programs used the word “Twitter” in their programming three times more often in December 2009 than they did in late 2008 and January 2009.

And how do mentions of Twitter, Facebook and MySpace on traditional television compare? Take a look:

So even though Facebook has scads more users (Wikipedia says it's Facebook's 350M vs. Twitter's 45M), you can see that twitter gets more mentions of TV.

So maybe Dave Winer is right and twitter is "a dress rehearsal for the news system of the future"!

Health Care, the New Buzz

The economy reigned the news last year, but in 2009, health care was on the lips of news programs everywhere. Compare "health care" and "economy" in Snapstream TV Trends and you can see the economy dominated the national dialog at the beginning of the 2009, but by the end of the year mentions of health-care topics far eclipsed the economy:

Infidelity in 2009: Tiger Woods vs. David Letterman

We all know the media loves a good scandal, and 2009 was rife with scandal. We learned politicians like Mark Sanford and John Edwards strayed from their wives as well as sports superstar Tiger Woods and late night TV host David Letterman. It seems like fidelity was in short supply.

The media treats each scandal differently, following every lead and looking for the best angle to capture viewer attention. It would appear that the perpetrator is a sitting duck once his secret is out. All he can do is try not to say anything incriminating and hope the story dies, right? Not so. Compare the David Letterman and Tiger Woods scandals:

On the surface these stories are remarkably similar. Both involve major celebrities. Both involve multiple transgressions and married men. And yet David Letterman didn't get nearly as much media scrutiny as Tiger Woods got and is still getting, despite the added complexity of blackmail in David Letterman's case. Strikingly, David Letterman got almost as much heat for making fun of Sarah Palin as for sleeping with his staff.

Moral of the story: When caught with your pants down, what you do and how you present yourself determines how much the media is willing to forgive, and how quickly they will forget.

Wonder what else is driving national television trends? Check out the Snapstream TV Trends tool to see for yourself and share any interesting observations you make in the comments below.

-- Aaron Mielke, Software Engineer

(First time visitors: Welcome to SnapStream! We make TV search software used by organizations to search inside TV shows. And it's not too expensive, starting at $2,000. What's TV search, you ask? Watch this YouTube video or visit our website to learn more.)

We don't do a lot of press releases anymore, but here's one that went out earlier this morning. Congrats to my team here at SnapStream!

(PR Web has the press release and graphics here)

The Daily Show and The Colbert Report Choose SnapStream to Monitor and Search Broadcast Television

Houston, December 21, 2009 - SnapStream Media, Inc. announced today that Comedy Central’s hit TV shows "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report," have selected the company’s TV search solution for locating and packaging high-definition clips from television broadcasts. Launched in 2007, SnapStream Server is a turn-key television search appliance that enables organizations to record and store thousands of hours of television and then search inside those recordings by keywords and phrases.

“Part of what makes the Daily Show and the Colbert Report great is their satire of news stories, media organizations and political figures. So they are very serious about monitoring television! As the shows deploy SnapStream, we believe our TV search technology will prove invaluable and essential to them—technically and creatively,” said Rakesh Agrawal, SnapStream’s CEO and Founder. “And their selection of SnapStream, after a rigorous evaluation process, validates the uniqueness and power of our TV search technology for any organizations that needs to monitor television.”

The SnapStream TV search solution to be deployed at the Daily Show and Colbert Report will provide for a completely high-definition (HD) workflow, allowing the show’s producers to centrally record and archive more than 30 channels of traditional HDTV; then subsequently search those recordings, create clips that can interact with Avid and Final Cut Pro video editing systems.

Visit the http://www.snapstream.com/ website to learn more about SnapStream's affordable and effective TV search technology - our turn-key TV search appliances starting at $2,000.

About SnapStream Media, Inc.

SnapStream allows organizations to put their finger on the pulse of traditional television. Customers can record a virtually unlimited number of TV shows from satellite, cable or antenna and then search inside those TV shows to pinpoint television content of interest. Existing customers include government organizations, such as the U.S. Senate and the City of New York, to educational institutions at the university and K-12 level to entertainment organizations such as Comcast Entertainment, Current TV, and MTV.

###

Updated 11/03/2017: added new information on creating a TV headend in the Cloud.

Based out of Houston, SnapStream has been making TV distribution and recording products for over a decade.

TV Networks, TV Shows, Media/News sites , K-12 Schools, Government departments, Journalism colleges and dozens of local TV stations use SnapStream to distribute, record, search, clip and to post clips to Twitter/Facebook.

While most organizations are now looking to create their own digital TV head-end, there are still some who want to go the analog route. This article is for those customers.

New - How to create your own digital (IP) TV head-end in the Cloud

Why build my own cable head-end?

First of all, why would you want to build a cable head-end? Why not just take the regular cable signal from your cable provider and distribute that over RF around your organization? Well, for a lot of people “regular” cable (ie what you get without any kind of a receiver or set-top box) doesn’t include channels that are important to them. Regular cable might not include certain sports packages – like NFL Sunday Ticket or NBA League Pass on DirecTV – or other channels.

For example, say CSPAN is important to you. Well, here in Houston, TX, our local cable provider (Comcast) has been moving channels from the “analog” spectrum into the digital only spectrum and CSPAN has been one of the channels that’s been moved. So the only way to get CPSAN in Houston on Comcast is using a digital cable box (or a DTA – digital to analog – box). And if you want to distribute that channel around to various TVs in your office without a digital cable box at every TV, then you look at building your own regular cable head-end!

Another reason why you might want to modulate your own cable line-up is you might want to include non-TV channels on your cable line-up. For example, maybe you have a few security cameras that you want to modulate to certain channels on your cable system.

How do I build my own cable head-end?

So how do you create your own cable head-end? It’s surprisingly easy. Here’s a high-level overview of what your system will look like:

1. Your TV source is usually going to be either satellite (here in the US that means DirecTV or Dish) or digital cable. Depending on how many channels you’re modulating (‘n’ in the above diagram), you’ll need a corresponding number of receivers or set-top boxes from your provider. And if you’re using a satellite service like DirecTV, you’ll need a multi-port switch to drive all of those set-top boxes off of one satellite dish. A multi-port switch is a sort of splitter for satellite service.

2. Each set-top box is set to a particular channel on that TV source. Then that set-top box connects to it’s corresponding modulator via RCA video and audio cables. Generally speaking, analog modulators come in two varieties:

• "Channelized" modulators – this kind of modulator is hard-wired to modulate the audio/video passed into them to a particular channel # (ie to a particular frequency of the RF spectrum). You can’t change the channel number that it outputs on-the-fly.
• "Agile" modulators – with an Agile modulator, you can configure, on the fly, what channel you want it to output on. This provides more flexibility with the channels you can output on, but with some sacrifice of quality. Agile modulators are also more expensive (roughly twice as expensive) than "Channelized" modulators.

The typical recommendation, as I’ve heard it, is that most of your modulators can be “channelized” and then maybe you add a few “agile” modulators in case you need to modulate to some random channels later down the line.

3. And then each of the modulators connects to the combiner via RF and the combiner mashes all the channels together into one RF signal. There are two types of combiners – ones with amplifiers built-in (“active combiners”) and ones without amplifiers (“passive combiners”). Depending on how you’re distributing RF (the next step), an “active” combiner might save you the need for a dedicated RF amplifier on the output of the combiner.

4. Last but not least, you need to distribute your new cable signal throughout your organization. Designing an RF distribution system is a separate topic unto itself (discussion of splitters and taps, signal loss of distance, etc.), but for simple configurations, you just need to amplify the signal at the exit to the combiner. How much you need to amplify it depends on how many ways you’re splitting it and how long the distances are in your RF network.

If you’re doing all of this so you can record TV and search over it with SnapStream, your SnapStream Server is 100% compatible with your new custom cable line-up. We have the ability to create custom line-ups so your program guide in SnapStream exactly matches how you have your channels configured.

Ballpark Pricing

You’ll need to contact a vendor or distributor of this equipment, but our quick calculations had the per channel cost of the modulators and combiners (EXCLUDING the cost of any multi-port switch, receivers, and RF distribution stuff), if you’re using “channelized” (ie “fixed”) modulators, come out to $150 / channel. And if you’re going with “agile” modulators, then the cost might go up to something like $250 / channel. Now this is just eyeball pricing.

Ok now I have my own lineup, how can I record it?

If you are like most of our customers and want to record TV for strategic purposes SnapStream can help. Our appliance lets you record any TV feed (antenna, cable, satellite, IP or inhouse analog/digital feeds) on a centralized DVR. Once recorded we index all the closed captions making it possible for users to search inside shows. And once you've found what you are looking for there are easy tools tocreate a clip and then download it or to post it to Twitter/Facebook.

Conclusion

That's it... Thanks to my friends at Blonder Tongue for their help in putting this together. And if you're reading this and want to be able to record LOTS of TV and then search inside those TV shows, let us know. That's what our product, SnapStream, is all about!

SnapStream Enterprise TV, the software that runs our TV servers, has a lot of different features that make it suitable for a lot of different tasks. But as someone once said, with great power comes great responsibility!

"With great power comes great responsibilty." - Uncle Ben tells Peter Parker

Because the server has a lot of different functions, it may be accessible to a lot of different users - for example, at one educational institution, the SnapStream server is accessible to professors and students from a dozen different classes, as well as departmental staff, research assistants and IT. The server might be in use for two or three different purposes at any given time. That means a lot of users with different and sometimes competing needs, who have a lot of opportunities to get in each others' way.

Fortunately, we also have some very powerful and versatile tools for wrangling your user base.

User Groups
SnapStream software has group-model security. This means that users aren't assigned permissions directly, but rather, they are assigned to groups, and permissions are assigned to everyone in each group. This makes it a lot easier to manage a large group of users- especially when you're using the LDAP integration feature, which I'll talk about a bit below.

The permissions configuration page looks like this:

A detailed description of what each permission does is available in our help file.

Predefined groups
Enterprise TV comes preconfigured with several user groups that are designed for some of the typical tasks that you might want to permit or deny.

Administrators: These users can do everything on the server, including change user permissions, so put only your most trusted and knowledgeable users in this group. An unskilled user in this group can do a lot of damage by accident.

Schedulers: Basically just like Administrators, except they don't have access to any server settings. Notably, these users can manage recording priorities. These guys are sort of "in charge" of the recording schedule.

Basic Schedulers: They can submit recording jobs, but they can't manage recording priorities. New jobs that they submit will come in at the bottom of the priority list, so they can't accidentally bump someone's crucial CNN Newsroom recordings for a ball game (or vice versa).

Live TV Viewers: These users can't schedule recordings, but they can view Live TV and create TV Alerts. Note that Live TV can't ever cause a recording to be blocked- these guys are one step below Basic Schedulers.

Recorded TV Viewers: They can watch and use recordings, but they can't watch Live TV.

All of these groups can download files, create clips and schedule TV Alerts. A detailed breakdown of the permissions for each group can be found in
the help file.

How permissions affect the user experience
Users will only see options to which they have access. A Basic Schedulers user, for example, won't be able to even try to access the Settings menu- they simply won't see the option.

This helps ensure that users are steered towards the functions that you want them to perform without getting distracted by trying to fiddle with settings or change the recording schedule.

"Hiding" recordings from users with Folder Security
A client called us recently wanting to know if it was possible to create a series of recordings that would be hidden from most of their users. We weren't sure what they were planning- and we didn't ask - but what they were trying to do is pretty simple to accomplish using our Folder Security feature.

First, create a folder to which these "hidden recordings" will be saved.

Make sure that the Folder Security option is Enabled, as in the screenshot above. You'll see your user groups in a picklist. Simply select the groups that you want to have access the folder. To select multiple groups, hold the CTRL key and click on the group names.

Now, we need to create a recording that will be saved to the hidden folder. The easiest way to do this is by using the scheduling tools in the web admin. To create a manual recording, mouse over Setup Recordings and select Create New Recording.

Set the recording options however you want, and for Target Video Folder, select the hidden folder. (Note that the user creating the recording will need to have access to the hidden folder in order to select it from the drop-down menu). All recordings created by this job will now be saved to the hidden folder.

If you want to create a hidden recording from the Program Guide, first schedule the recording through the guide as normal. Then, you can change the Target Video Folder by Editing the recording, through Setup Recordings=> Recording Manager.

LDAP integration
Our LDAP integration feature allows your users to use their Active Directory or Novell credentials to log in to the server- one less password for them to forget!

Configuring LDAP integration is a three-step process.
1. Consult our recommendations for LDAP integration for some best practices relating to the configuration of Windows on the server.
2. Enable LDAP integration, in Settings=> Advanced Settings=> Security Settings. You'll need the location of your LDAP server, as well as a username and password who have permission to query other users.

3. Go to Settings=> Advanced Settings=> User Configuration. Add a new LDAP-linked group for each LDAP group that should have access, select the LDAP group that you want, and specify the permission settings. Note that users who aren't in an LDAP group that is "linked" in this way won't be able to log in.

A few words about security
When you log in to Enterprise TV Link, you can feel as secure as logging in to Windows. If you're using version 4.9.2 of Enterprise TV Link along with our LDAP integration feature, Windows will pass your login information to the SnapStream server, allowing you to bypass the login screen automatically.

When you're logging in to the web admin, you may see a page like the following:

This is a result of our implementation of SSL encryption in the web admin. The security handshake that allows your web browser to trust a site using SSL depends on a certificate that verifies the network name and domain of the server. Since that information is different for every installation, SnapStream can't provide a security certificate with new servers, which is why this error appears. However, it does NOT mean that the security of the TV server is compromised- it just means that your browser can't verify the name of the TV server. This error screen can be bypassed safely. If you'd like to purchase a security certificate for the server, we have instructions posted in our knowledgebase .

Please note that this only applies to the secure side of the web admin- that is, if the text in the address bar of your browser begins with HTTPS. If the address begins with HTTP, you're accessing the nonsecure side of the web admin, and your password will be transmitted in plain text, so be careful.

If you haven't realized it yet HDTV is no longer the wave of the future, it's the present. The recent digital conversion has made HDTV stations more prevalent and in turn propelled HDTV sales. It's become obvious that folks have come to value high quality TV, whether it's for personal at home viewing or presenting media mentions of your company in a board room. With the launch of the SnapStream Server HD, we're making it easy for you to record the highest possible quality TV and use SnapStream's powerful search technology to search within those recordings to pinpoint mentions of interest.

Anyone interested in showcasing their television recordings/clips in the highest quality will benefit from the SnapStream Server HD. Perhaps, you're a TV Station who just switched to broadcasting in HD and you need an HD aircheck solution, or you're a PR Director and want to present you company's TV mentions to your constituents/investors/shareholders/board members at the highest quality, or maybe you're a producer of a TV show like E!'s The Soup or VH1's Best Week Ever and you want to include HD clips into your program, whatever your case is the SnapStream Server HD makes it so you can easily get the best quality TV recordings.

How do I incorporate HD into my existing workflow?

1) First you will need an HD Source. It could be an ATSC (over-the-air) HD signal or a clear QAM signal from your cable/satellite provider or a signal from your own in-house QAM modulation solution.

2) Feed the source into the SnapStream Server HD. There are five input cards, so you can record up to five channels at a time.

3) Run SnapStream’s client software on PCs within your organization. The software user interface looks and feels like a DVR allowing for an easy implementation process.

4) Once you've done the above you can start recording, searching and clipping HD TV.

Now that you have the basic setup for recording and searching HD TV you can take it a step further by importing clips into an editing workstation. We've come up with two viable options to accomplish this task. You can either set up the SnapStream Transcode Appliance and create a file-based workflow or you can use the SnapStream HD-SDI Playout Appliance.

File Based Workflow:
In a file based workflow the SnapStream Transcode Appliance can be used to automatically convert your transport stream files to HD H.264 (works really well with Apple’s Final Cut Pro) or HD Windows Media files. Once the files have been transcoded into the preferred format they are ready for importing into the editing workstation.

HD-SDI Workflow:
In an HD-SDI workflow the SnapStream HD-SDI Playout Appliance allows you to ingest SnapStream recorded content (clips or full recordings) into SDI enabled products within your environment. For example a workstation running Avid or Apple’s Final Cut Pro that has an SDI input card that's connected to your HD-SDI router.

The SnapStream HD-SDI Playout Appliance is a separate appliance that you can connect to using the LAN. The user interface is web based and shows you a list of recordings/clips you've created using the SnapStream Server HD. By clicking the play button next to the show you can start the playback of your clip to the HD-SDI Playout Appliance. If you have a couple of clips you can create a playlist and que them all up at once, so you don't have to keep clicking play for each one. As a side benefit when you import the playlist into the workstation it comes through as one video file instead of multiple ones making it easier to edit.

Either of these workflows work well with the SnapStream Server HD. Which you choose really just depends on your preference.

What are the benefits of the SnapStream Server HD?

• Recording: It can record ATSC (over-the-air) HD or a clear QAM signal from your cable/satellite provider or your own in-house QAM modulation solution.
• Setting up Recordings: It’s a single centralized server for recordings. Accessible to everyone in the organization over the LAN.
• Searching: It’s equipped with SnapStream’s search technology so you can efficiently pinpoint TV clips of interest.
• Creating Clips: Recordings can be clipped directly from within SnapStream making for easy hand-offs from within the organization. No more sneakernet!
• Sharing: Clips can be emailed to anyone or sent as links to others within the organization. No more dubbing beta tapes!
• HD/SDI Ingest or File Transcode: Playout to HD-SDI via web-based interface ensures high-quality (HD) final output.
• Archiving: Added storage gives you flexibility in creating a fully stocked archive (40 Raw TB).

Want to learn more about the SnapStream Server HD? Contact a sales representative via sales@snapstream.com or 1-877-SNAPSTREAM to schedule a product demonstration.

With the holidays right around the corner, many organizations are preparing to recognize their loyal customers the usual cards, fruit baskets, buckets of caramel corn, and party invitations. Although thoughtful, these gifts don't last very long. Best-case scenario: By Jan. 1, they're lining some CEO's stomach or circular file. To set yourself apart, why not show your appreciation by giving them something far more useful, say, a company tech secret? No, you don't have to share proprietary information. Just tell a few key partners how the SnapStream Server has helped save your business time and money, boost employee productivity, and given you an edge over your competitors. They'll appreciate the tip, and we'll thank you with a present of our own: free tech support.

Seriously. For each purchase of a SnapStream Server that results from one of your referrals, we’ll renew your existing maintenance agreement for one year, up to ten years — and it won't cost you a dime. You can receive a decade of free service just for recommending SnapStream to clients and colleagues. Oh, and on the 10th paid referral, we’ll give you a backup server with the same specs as the one you already own. We’ll even install it on-site and conduct a day of staff training, too. We suspect that even Santa can't do better than that. Happy holidays!