http://www.beet.tv/2009/04/microsoft-rolls-out-adaptive-streaming-for-hd-video.html
LAS VEGAS --- In an effort to deliver the same experience for HD online video streams for consumers with different bandwidth connections, the industry is embracing a technology called "adaptive streaming."
Here at the annual NAB conference, Microsoft released its product called Smooth Streaming.
On Monday at the Microsoft booth on the convention floor, Beet.TV caught up with Steve Sklepowich for a demo and chat.
Steve explains that Smooth can be streamed on on http-based servers, not necessarily dedicated media servers. This presmumably can help publishers and advertisers with the cost of distributing this high bandwidth content.
Microsoft has a demo for Smooth which is now live.
One of the big players in the adaptive streaming movement is Akamai. Earlier this year, we spoke with Akamai CTO Mike Afergan about why adaptive streaming is important. Other CDN's are embracing adaptive streaming, as is Adobe.
Here's an analysis of adaptive streaming by Ryan Lawler over at Contentinople.
-- Andy Plesser, Executive Producer