IBC 2008开幕

一年一度的IBC展会已经开始了, and a slew of announcements coming out of the show surrounding mobile delivery and H.264—especially live HD encoding—reinforce the fact that Europe is a growing streaming media hotbed.

事实上, a new study indicates that Europe’s youth are leading the way on both online and mobile streaming.

"Nearly 50% of under 25s from the five major Europe markets are now regularly streaming TV shows or movies from broadcaster websites," according an announcement by Strategy Analytics’ Digital Media research arm.

"Broadcasters have been successful in reaching out to those demographics which have been drifting away from traditional television," said the company’s Director of Strategy, 马丁Olausson.

微软
微软’s big announcement, covered by many news sources, is the inclusion of H.264播放在Silverlight. 虽然不确定H.264 encoding will be included at some future date, Ben Waggoner provided a good perspective on his 博客 为什么微软选择加入H.264年回放.

"So, why MPEG-4 support in Silverlight?" asked Waggoner, a technical evangelist for 微软’s codec team. "We have customers with libraries of H.264 content they wanted to publish to Silverlight, but didn't want to reencode to VC-1."

瓦格纳指出了这一点, 就像闪电, "Silverlight's strengths go far beyond media playback", setting up a battle for interactive video deployment with Adobe’s flagship delivery platform.

数字急流
在美国其他地方.264年世界, 数字急流实时宣布, high definition encoding capabilities for its studio AVC Encoder software, 它支持H.264 encoding, transcoding and streaming in high definition formats including 720p, 1080p and 1080i. 数字急流 joins companies like Inlet and HaiVision in providing real-time H.264高清编码.

HaiVision
HaiVision announced an agreement to combine its H.264 MAKO-HD encoding appliance with Video Furnace’s inStream Viewer, to eliminate the need for a stand-alone player or browser plug in. The two companies are gearing their partnership toward digital signage and IP applications such as telepresence and IP broadcasting, 特别是在企业领域. HaiVision has been successful in the past at putting together encoding systems that have around 70-millisecond end-to-end latency. The company works at resolutions up to1080p resolution and data rates up to 10Mbps. 摩托罗拉
摩托罗拉 also made several announcements that use what it calls Adaptive Media Management (AMM). 这个框架创建了, 据公司介绍, "a cost-effective platform for the delivery of on demand services including video on demand (VOD), time-shifted television and on demand advertising".

更具体地说, 摩托罗拉 announced a media blade called the ODM2000 to improve the its B1 video server. The ODM2000 uses both both DRAM and flash memory for a flexible caching scenario. Since the B-1 server uses AMM to manage content, DRAM的使用, flash memory and local/remote storage is designed to lower total operating costs.

In addition, 摩托罗拉 also announced an update to its on-demand software system. 该公司的发布4.0 (SR4.0)，增加额外的H.264 support and integrates with Tandberg Openstream 4.0; the new software also adds DVD-like chaptering functionality for H.264 VOD and a playlist function that enable targeted ads for on-demand content.

P2P Next联盟
最后, a European Union-funded project called "P2P Next联盟" is showing off a set-top box that is aimed at using Peer-to-Peer for delivery of Internet Protocol Television, which has been created at the NextshareTV and has been developed at the Pioneer Digital Design Centre in London.

Johan Pouwelse , scientific director for P2P Next联盟, 注意，新玩家, 部分由先锋资助, 是由P2P Next的SwarmPlayer. The player is based on work originally done at Delft University of Technology.

"The current infrastructure of the internet is not suited to simultaneous transmission of live events to millions of people (i.e. 广播)," according to the Consortium’s website, noting that P2P is being explored since "most IP routers of the Internet cannot support multicasting and there seems to be no financial incentive for the ISPs to introduce multicasting."

该财团也注意到了这一点, since content is "moving from a collective and passive approach to personal active behavior, at home and in mobile situations outside the home" that P2P delivery is needed across multiple delivery platforms, 不仅仅是互联网.

IBC continues at the RAI Congress Center in Amsterdam until September 16.