Microsoft Smooth Streaming Provides True High-Definition Video Delivery

Microsoft releases Smooth Streaming; CTV, HSN, NBCOlympics.com, TV 2 and RAI
among early adopters.

LAS VEGAS, April 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Furthering its vision to provide
superior options for delivering online media experiences, today at the 2009
National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show, Microsoft Corp. released
Smooth Streaming, a feature of Internet Information Services (IIS) Media
Services. IIS Media Services is an integrated HTTP-based media delivery
platform that includes extensions for cost-effectively measuring, monetizing
and caching media. Microsoft highlighted growing industry adoption of Smooth
Streaming from leading media customers such as electronic retailer HSN, and
broadcasters such as NBCOlympics.com, RAI, TV 2 and CTV, as well as media
ecosystem partners, including content delivery networks (CDNs), encoding
independent software vendors (ISVs) and digital rights management (DRM)
service providers, that have announced support for Smooth Streaming.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20000822/MSFTLOGO)

"NBCOlympics.com has once again chosen Silverlight to stream the Olympics in
high definition. Thanks to Silverlight 3 the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver
is going to be a live and on-demand Smooth Streaming event with full 720p,"
said Perkins Miller, senior vice president of Digital Media, NBC Sports &
Olympics. "We'll be able to deliver a continuous, high-quality online
experience that mirrors the quality of the home viewing experience that our
customers have come to expect."

With Smooth Streaming, consumers get minimal buffering and fast startup time,
because Smooth Streaming adapts the quality of the video stream in real time,
based upon the consumer's changing bandwidth and central processing unit
conditions. Media companies can take advantage of Smooth Streaming features to
boost advertising and subscription revenues by using true high-definition (HD)
video (1080p) with uninterrupted delivery to extend viewing times. Smooth
Streaming takes advantage of the Web's massive existing HTTP infrastructure
and brings superior performance and scalability to media experiences delivered
using HTTP.

Microsoft also demonstrated end-to-end delivery of live streams delivered via
Akamai Technologies Inc.'s AdaptiveEdge Streaming for Microsoft Silverlight.
Live encoding of video streams will be produced with Inlet Technologies'
Spinnaker, the first video encoder to support IIS Live Smooth Streaming. Live
Smooth Streaming, currently in beta, provides personal video recorder
(PVR)-style access and navigation to live video streams. Users can join events
in progress, then quickly jump to the beginning or rewind the highlights.

At NAB, Microsoft also showed the latest developments with Silverlight.
Silverlight 3, currently in beta, provides features to further improve online
media experiences including support for native playback of MP4 formats
(H.264/AAC), an extensible decoder pipeline, full-screen HD playback using
graphics processing unit acceleration and out-of-browser capabilities.

"As online video continues to rapidly evolve, Microsoft is proud to offer a
premier end-to-end Smooth Streaming solution that content providers can
leverage to deliver true HD-quality, highly scalable and secure online video
to their customers," said Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the .NET
Developer Platform at Microsoft. "Coupled with the power of Silverlight, IIS
Live Smooth Streaming is further evidence of Microsoft's commitment to ensure
that our partners and customers have the tools and platforms they need to
deliver high-quality online video experiences."

Leading Solution Providers Announce Smooth Streaming Support
To ensure a range of solutions and services are available for the IIS Smooth
Streaming platform, Microsoft has worked closely with partners across the
digital media ecosystem. CDNs including AT&T, CDNetworks Co. Ltd., Internap
Network Services Corp., Level 3 Communications LLC and Limelight Networks
Inc., as well as encoding product vendors including Digital Rapids, Envivio
Inc., Grab Networks Inc. (Anystream), Inlet Technologies, Rhozet, Telestream
Inc., VBrick Systems Inc., ViewCast Corp. and Winnov Inc., have all announced
products and services supporting Smooth Streaming.

To provide the highest level of content protection, Microsoft has implemented
Silverlight DRM powered by PlayReady for live and on-demand smooth streaming.
Leading DRM application service providers such as BuyDRM, CDNetworks, Entriq
Inc., ExtendMedia Corp., Ipercast Inc. and iStreamPlanet Co. have announced
support for Silverlight DRM. In addition, at NAB, BuyDRM and Envivio
demonstrated the first implementation of protected Live Smooth Streaming
encoding using Silverlight DRM.

IIS Media Services, an Integrated Platform for Media Delivery Using HTTP
IIS Media Services (previously IIS Media Pack) consists of five media-relevant
extensions for IIS:
-- Smooth Streaming, adaptive streaming of on-demand media for
Silverlight
-- Live Smooth Streaming, live adaptive streaming delivery to Silverlight
-- Advanced Logging, rich, real-time client- and server-side logging
-- Bit Rate Throttling, metering the speed at which media is delivered to
a
player

-- Web Playlists, secure sequencing of media content

With these features, companies can now manage and administer one
infrastructure that delivers both rich media and other Web content, without
requiring dedicated streaming servers.

More information on IIS Media Services and Smooth Streaming can be found at
http://iis.net/media and http://www.iis.net/media/experiencesmoothstreaming.
More information about Silverlight 3 can be found at
http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight or at the Microsoft Silverlight Virtual
Pressroom at
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/silverlight/default.mspx.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in software,
services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full
potential.

SOURCE Microsoft Corp.

Rapid Response Team of Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, +1-503-443-7070,
rrt@waggeneredstrom.com, for Microsoft Corp.