Microsoft IIS Media Services 4 Will Come With Smooth Streaming

By Barb Mosher (@barbmosher) Sep 13, 2010

Adobe wasn't the only one making news at the IBC Conference in Amsterdam last week. Microsoft also had a few good news items to share, including the upcoming IIS Media Services 4.

Advancing Media Services

At IBC Adobe announced the latest version of Flash Media Server including their newest member to the Flash Server family, Flash Enterprise Server. But Microsoft has also been making headway in the digital department. They introduced their upcoming new version of IIS Media Services 4.

Smooth Streaming

One of the biggest updates is the addition of Smooth Streaming as an extension. Smooth streaming provides the ability to seamless stream content to Silverlight and other clients via HTTP. With Smooth Streaming the content feed adapts to the users bandwith and computer capabilities. Users with high bandwith can get a true HD experience (up to 1020p quality streaming).

If you want to test it out, there's a demo that you can run at different bandwiths to see how it responds.

Part of the process to enable smooth streaming is the encoding of video content at different quality levels. This is done using Expression Encoder 3 from Microsoft or another compression tool.

Coming Soon

This was just one of the announcements made by Microsoft at IBC which is happening until tomorrow. Set Top boxes were also demoed as were Silverlight Enhanced Movies. You can get all the details on the Silverlight Team blog.

IIS Media Services 4 is now available as a beta, but is expected to be delivered within 30 days of IBC. It's a free add-on to Microsoft's IIS Web Server.