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Akamai posts

Ready for the first all-HD Winter Olympics? NBC is

by Richard Lawler posted Nov 5th 2009 at 2:57PM

Forget Torino and its quality issues, the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver promises to be a different event, and this time it is coming home shot 100% natively in HD. Watching on TV, viewers can expect a slew of coverage across NBC's networks, plus a continuously updated HD VOD package of the day's highlights, and interactive TV features to pull up medal counts, athlete bios and Team USA reports. Checking in online? NBC is back with a new iteration of Microsoft's Silverlight streaming, promising even more HD footage, with the ability to fast forward and rewind streams, plus save clips to your computer. Behind the online efforts are the encoding skills of iStreamPlanet providing 23 different video feeds, with Akamai's new HD distribution network distributing the adaptive bitrate streams directly to your PC. Remember when we were just happy to get 5.1 surround?

Read - Akamai and iStreamPlanet to Power Live and on-Demand Video for NBC's Coverage of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games

Continue reading Ready for the first all-HD Winter Olympics? NBC is

Akamai HD network launches, streaming Flash and Silverlight HD to the incredibly bored masses

by Richard Lawler posted Sep 29th 2009 at 4:27PM

While Akamai has been streaming video over the net for years, it realized a couple of years ago even its network wasn't up to the task for all the high definition video on the way. To that end it's been reworking its infrastructure and today announced the launch of the Akamai HD Network with a live inaugural stream from its Network Operations Center -- you can watch a rebroadcast at the read link, but we'd recommend watching grass grow and waiting for a watched pot to boil as more interesting activities. While they may not be experts at providing the content we want to see -- leave that to partners like Epix HD -- when it comes to actually delivering it, anyone this passionate about bandwidth, servers and streaming must know what they're doing.

Akamai delivers HD trailers to the Cannes Film Festival website

by Steven Kim posted May 21st 2009 at 10:41AM

Akamai CannesSome of the Engadget HD crew religiously plug their ears and shut their eyes tight during movie trailers, in hopes of avoiding any spoilers. The beautiful people at the Cannes Film Festival can't really follow this strategy for two reasons. First, it would end up as National Enquirer cover material; second, they actually rely on trailers to help them decide which flicks to sit in on. Nothing spoils the director's intent -- or gets viewers to click away -- faster than stuttering, pixelated video, so Akamai is promising to deliver the trailers to the festival website in 720p that flows as smoothly as the french Riviera; our own visits to the site seem to confirm that Akamai is holding true to its word. The festival is almost over, but you can still access content from throughout the festival on the website.

Akamai supports dynamic HD streaming on Adobe Flash, starting with Epix

by Richard Lawler posted May 13th 2009 at 10:44AM

Tucked away in Akamai's announcement of dynamic streaming capabilities and other tweaks to go along with its support for Adobe Flash Media Server 3.5 was the news that Epix -- the new joint venture from Viacom / Lionsgate / MGM launching first online then on cable & satellite near you as a new movie channel -- will be among the first to take advantage. We're the ability to seamlessly switch between HD and lower-quality feeds as bandwidth and CPU power demands will be appreciated by viewers but it's still not even clear what the new venture's website will even be, with epix.com still pointing to this. That's sure to be cleared up by launch (still slated for later this month) right?

Akamai sees more publishers switching to HD video online

by Richard Lawler posted Apr 24th 2009 at 1:18PM

Sure Akamai sponsored a new IDC whitepaper finding smooth video and high resolution is important to most online audiences -- services it is conveniently positioned to help provide -- but that doesn't mean the results are wrong. Last year a similarly self promotional survey found 75% or broadcasters planning HD online and in the last twelve months we've had an explosion of HD on the net, from the Olympics and NCAA Championships to Netflix, Amazon, MLB and YouTube to 1080p from DirecTV, DISH and VUDU. Key results of the 2009 analysis? Publishers need HD streaming to keep up with the competition, video quality is important, and high definition means users will stick around longer. Notable in its absence is the complaint many have about downloads and streams, no high quality / surround audio. Just an idea for the 2010 survey guys.

Ascent Media, Akamai & Sofatronic delivering end-to-end BD-Live solution

by Richard Lawler posted Jan 7th 2009 at 8:51PM

There's a lot to making a BD-Live enhanced movie go (just ask the people behind Iron Man), so Ascent Media's coordinating a three pronged approach to get connected discs out and working amongst the people. Sofatronic's Kaleidoscope tech is the backbone for developing interactive Blu-ray tech, while Akamai's network makes sure servers don't melt on day 1, and Ascent Media's Blink Digital group provides creative services to find implementations that appeal to viewers. Sounds great in theory, show us something we haven't seen before and make it work smoothly, then we'll be impressed.

Microsoft's Silverlight to get adaptive streaming boost from Akamai

by Steven Kim posted Oct 30th 2008 at 8:22PM

Microsoft and Akamai Smooth HDMicrosoft is hoping to spread the HD to more than its Xbox 360, and has partnered up with Akamai to demo its latest combination of technologies that will send 720p content smoothly over the internet. A beta release of the Silverlight player plus Akamai's AdaptiveEdge Streaming will debut in early 2009, but the aim is as old as the hills -- deliver smooth (or at least, smoothly degrading) HD video to internet viewers with standard web servers, as opposed to dedicated video streaming servers. The videos will stream at 720p and maintain a 24fps minimum, eating up 2 - 6 Mbps in the process, all the while adapting the transmission based on the quality of the connection. Curious? There's a demo link in the source below, so get some post-Olympics use out of that Silverlight plugin you installed this summer!

Akamai knows (hopes) 75% of broadcasters are taking HD online

by Richard Lawler posted Apr 16th 2008 at 2:55PM

With all the HD going online recently, a release claiming that 75% of "leading broadcasts" plan to deliver high definition via the internet in the next 24 months isn't surprising -- but we'll at least have to consider the source. Delivered by Akamai, a company in the business of providing the network to deliver all that high bandwidth video, the survey results also showed that 80 percent of those who plan to offer HD video, either already do, or will within the next year so don't expect the 'net to be getting less crowded any time soon. The company claims it can reliably deliver bitrates of up to 6 Mbps -- and expects TV and movie producers to take advantage of that quickly. Whatever, as long as we can catch replays of The Office, Lost, Battlestar Galactica and of course Airwolf even when away from home, we'll be happy.

Akamai launches HD content website

by Steven Kim posted Oct 30th 2007 at 6:57PM

Akamai launches HD content websiteAkamai has launched a "proof of concept" portal for demonstrating online HD content. The site shows off their edge delivery technologies designed around HD streaming. Anyone can try out the site, but you'll need some healthy bandwidth to get the full experience. Recommended specs include 7.5Mbps for the 720 feeds, 13.5Mbps for the 1080; if your connection doesn't meet spec, expect hitches. It's a tantalizing view of the future, but those bandwidth requirements are steep! Still, we're on board with Akamai's reasons for putting this site up, especially "engage audiences with higher quality video experiences" and "show industry support and leadership around the move toward high-definition video." We've seen it and we want it, so the only question left is when will the industry players let us get it?

Akamai readying infrastructure for HD Internet delivery

by Steven Kim posted Aug 29th 2007 at 8:23AM

Akamai readies for HDAkamai is making some changes to its content distribution network (CDN) which are meant to facilitate the distribution of long-form HD content over the internet. It's more than just a simple bump up in Akamai's already huge capacity, and has enhancements designed around delivery of "bandwidth-intensive" content. Design criteria include support for files larger than 2 GB, VC-1 and MPEG-4 codecs, and 720i/1080i/1080p resolutions, which are some pretty lofty and HD-worthy specs. The goal is to provide 100-Tb/s bandwidth (that's Terabit!) using an edge-network architecture, which will hopefully keep end users happy with fast downloads and and local broadband providers happy with less traffic going through their own gateways. Sadly, no specific rollout dates are given.




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