Mix 08 Keynote - Media initiatives

vsood — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 06:08:00 GMT

During today's keynote, Scott Guthrie discussed web, media, RIA and mobile. He announced the release of Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 too. He specifically talked about how Silverlight 2.0 helps improve HD user experience, improve TCO and offers monetization opportunities for media. This is big step that helps our customers to enable their users have a better experience on their sites

Better user Experience
In this space Scott announced an adaptive streaming capability for Silverlight. This can work with any adaptive streaming algorithm. Also announced was a strategic partnership with Move networks. Move networks is big in the adaptive streaming space and their adaptive streaming functionality will be integrated into the Silverlight client. Currently, they use their own client.

Lower TCO
Streaming - Here Scott announced Windows Media Services 2008 (WMS 2008) and how it has 2x improved scalability over previous verison and 3x over others. The moment of pride for WMS was when Scott mentioned how WMS scalability played a crucial role in NBC deciding to go with Microsoft and Silverlight for delivering Olympics online. This is so important as it is clearly a manifestation of customers confidence in WMS. So why don't you give it a try and as Scott mentioned it is free of cost download from Microsoft.com. (In the video link below please seek to 00:58:20 to see Scott talking about WMS)

Here is a screenshot from the keynote:

Progressive Download - Scott mentioned how you have a need to control bandwidth in progressive download scenarios and how IIS Media Pack - Bit Rate Throttling (BRT) helps you achieve the goal without compromising user experience. BRT supports most known media formats out of the box. It is really simple to install please try and explore this on your IIS server. Please don't pay extra on your server when you can save money by saving bandwidth. (In the video link below please seek to 00:59:00 to see Scott talking about BRT).

Here is a screenshot from the keynote:

Monetization
There were several initiatives that were talked about in this space. This included:- Silverlight Ad template for Visual Studio 2008, Using Expression Blend to add design attributes to Ad and Video, Video.Show, Atlas Ad-Manager, Web Playlists and overlay Adverts. John Harris did amazing demos for all of these. Additionally, Double click VP Ari Paparo came out and demoed Double click SDK support for In-stream Ads in Silverlight. This was a cool demo so please see the video. Double click SDK support will be available in Q2 2008. Last and certainly not the least NBC Olympics team came out and gave a sneak peek at the planned NBC Olympics site. This is freaking amazing. You must have never seen a media offering so grand. There is 2200 hours of live video planned to be offered over 17 days. This will also be available for on-demand viewing later. PIP, 4 simultaneous screens, rewind are some of the cool aspects of the new site. (Seek to 01:01:20 in the video to learn more about monetization initiatives)

Web Playlists - John Harris, showed how you can have a pre-roll in stream ad using IIS Media Pack - Web Playlists. He demoed how easy it is to disable/ enable seek using this functionality. He also showed the management console for web playlists as a part of the demo. There are break out session that cover web playlists is more details. As I mentioned in my blog earlier Web Playlists CTP1 went live last week. (Seek to 01:08:00 in the video to learn more about web playlists)

Key Note Video - http://visitmix.com/blogs/Joshua/Day-1-Keynote/

You can download the following anytime on IIS.net
IIS Media Pack - Bit Rate Throttling Go Live

IIS Media Pack - Web Playlists CTP1

Windows Media Services 2008

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9ccf6312-723b-4577-be58-7caab2e1c5b7&DisplayLang=en

Vishal Sood : Silverlight

Mix 08 Keynote - Media initiatives