14 DAY TRIAL // Another piece of the three screens and a Cloud vision has come into place for Microsoft, with the release to manufacturing of the fourth version of IIS Media Services.
As far as this Internet Information Services plug-in is concerned, RTM is synonymous with general availability.
Of course, IIS Media Services 4.0 RTM is now live on the Microsoft Download Center, and available free of charge.
IIS Media Services 4.0 has been released approximately one year after its predecessor, and is a core solution enabling content providers to serve new digital offerings involving adaptive streaming to three screens, using multiple file formats and protocols.
“This IIS Media Services release centers on new functionality for the live and on-demand IIS Smooth Streaming components. Building on over two years of industry usage, IIS Smooth Streaming has become the primary HTTP adaptive streaming technology for delivering content online,” revealed Microsoft’s Chris Knowlton.
“With another year of customer wins and input on what would make it even better, the feature set in IIS Media Services 4.0 addresses some specific themes, focusing primarily on expanded iPhone support and a broad set of new live streaming features.”
Using IIS Media Services 4.0 customers can push content to PCs and Macs with Silverlight installed, but also to additional platforms including Windows Phone 7, iPad, iPhone, Xbox.
“Using the same live H.264 streams you encode for Silverlight and other Smooth Streaming players running on PCs, Macs, Linux, Nokia S60 phones, Windows Phone 7, and set-top-boxes, IIS Media Services can now re-package those streams in real time for delivery to iPhone, iPad, and other Apple iOS devices. It's as simple as clicking a checkbox,” Knowlton added.
“Under the hood, IIS Media Services re-packages (transmuxes) the H.264 and AAC content into the Apple HTTP Live Streaming format, which iOS devices natively understand.”
IIS Media Services 4.0 RTM comes with a number of interesting new features, including: Live DVR, archiving, archive segmentation, AES Encryption, B-frame support, and compatibility mode for iOS3 devices.
According to the software giant, IIS Media Services 4.0 also allows content providers to take advantage of Low-Latency Live Streaming.
The promise from the Redmond company is that the time needed for users to receive content updates is taken down to as little as 2 seconds from more than 15 seconds.
IIS Media Services 4.0 RTM is available for download here.