14 DAY TRIAL // At the start of November, when it released IIS Media Services 4.0 to manufacturing, Microsoft promised that a new version of the IIS Smooth Streaming Client would follow soon enough. The Redmond company certainly lived up to the promise, with version 1.5 of the IIS Smooth Streaming Client hitting release to web (RTW) at the start of December 2010.
IIS Smooth Streaming Client 1.5 RTW is now available free of charge via the Microsoft Download Center, and customers looking to offer customers on-demand and live IIS Smooth Streaming content should have a look at the technology.
The focus with IIS Media Services 4.0 was placed on offering rich media experiences across three screens, and the IIS Smooth Streaming Client 1.5 makes it possible for content to be served to Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 applications.
In addition to on-demand and live streaming capabilities, IIS Smooth Streaming Client 1.5 sports a variety of other features including full DVR, live ad insertion, multiple camera angles, trickplay, etc., according to Microsoft.
Obviously, customers looking to leverage version 1.5 of the IIS Smooth Streaming Client 1.5 will also need IIS Media Services manifest compression. At the same time, IIS Smooth Streaming Client 1.5 is designed to work in concert with IIS Media Services 4.0 or higher.
The software giant enumerated some of the features that the IIS Smooth Streaming Client offers customers, including:
“•Basic playback controls: APIs such as Play, Pause, Stop; Events for playback and diagnostics; Properties to track position, and so on;
•Advanced playback support: DVR support for Live Smooth Streaming; Support for tracking live events while in DVR; Trickplay – slow motion/fast-forward/rewind (Desktop Silverlight only, not available on Windows Phone); Multiple Audio Language support; Text stream support for captions/subtitles (Desktop Silverlight only, not available on Windows Phone);
•Support for offline playback scenarios
•H.264/AAC support
•Monetization: Ad playback integration – scheduling capabilities, tracking ad progress. (Desktop Silverlight only, not available on Windows Phone); Live ad insertion with IIS Live Smooth Streaming. (Desktop Silverlight only, not available on Windows Phone); Rich analytics with IIS Advanced Logging; Analytics APIs; Support for specifying markers/ad ingestion points outside the main manifest. (Desktop Silverlight only, not available on Windows Phone)
•Content Protection – PlayReady integration for VC-1/H.264 content
•Composite manifest support for scenarios such as Rough Cut Editing (RCE). (Desktop Silverlight only, not available on Windows Phone)
•Selecting tracks for playback (for example, restrict the available bit rates, support multiple camera angles in a single stream, and so on)
•Support for progressive download ads/content. (Desktop Silverlight only, not available on Windows Phone).”
IIS Smooth Streaming Client 1.5 RTW is available for download here.