Xing Technology
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Xing Technology was a live audio broadcast software company founded in Arroyo Grande, California in 1989 by former networking executive Howard Gordon on the basis of a simple (i.e. slow) JPEG decoding library that he had developed.
This software attracted the attention of Chris Eddy, who had developed a technique for processing discrete cosine transforms (DCT) very quickly through software. Eddy's technique helped create the first Xing MPEG video player, a very simple MS-DOS application that could play back an I-frame-only video MPEG stream encoded at a constant quantization level at 160x120 resolution. This was an impressive accomplishment for the Intel 386 and Intel 486 level computers of the time.
On the basis of this, Xing expanded, reaching seven employees.
Over the next several years, Xing expanded into several directions. Windows support was added to the MS-DOS MPEG player and then created a software MPEG audio decoder (first only MP2 out of patent considerations with MP3), a real time ISA 160x120 MPEG capture board (XingIt!), a JPEG management system (Picture Prowler) and finally moved into networking, creating a handful of different products before settling down on StreamWorks, the first live 24 hour video and the first live 24 hour audio broadcast system for the internet. RealVideo appeared just before StreamWorks, but at the time it could only broadcast pre-encoded clips. It could not transmit live video. Xing experienced a period of expansion into the mid to late 90's through its MP3 software, but encountered some retraction later on, was bought out by RealNetworks in 1999 and was quickly absorbed.