Microsoft

Update 4:15 p.m. PDT: Two clarifications. First, Remote Media Streaming is not limited to music--you can also stream video and pictures. I focused on music because that's the main topic of this blog. Second, you are required to associate a Windows Live ID (which used to be called Passport) with each computer whose library you want to share, and each computer you want to be able to access that library. I assume Microsoft took this step to avoid complaints or possible litigation from content owners.

In the announcement of the impending release of Windows 7 RC (basically the final beta), Microsoft on Wednesday confirmed a rumor that I first saw reported by Zack Whitaker of ZDNet last month: a new feature called Remote Media Streaming will let you access the music library on your home PC from another computer over the Web.

(Credit: Renai LeMay/ZDNet Australia)

It's like Slingbox, only instead of accessing the cable box or DVR sitting in your home, you're accessing the music files stored on your home PC.

It could get really interesting, if combined with Windows Live ID--simply associate a Live ID with your home machine, and you could get immediate automatic access to your music library whenever you log on with that ID on another machine (though you might need the Windows Media Player 12 on that accessing machine).

This is the first exciting new digital-media feature I've seen in Windows 7, but it seems to be at cross-purposes with other Microsoft efforts. For instance, one selling point of Windows Home Server is the ability to access files remotely, and while I suppose that some families might use that feature to access their financial records or homework, it seems like digital media would be the most interesting use. Offering that feature in Windows 7 takes some of the steam out of Home Server.

Then there's the whole Zune factor--for the last two years, the Media Player has languished untouched while the Zune PC software has been updated several times. Now, just when I had finally abandoned the Media Player, it looks like I'll have a reason to re-employ it.

From Microsoft's perspective, does it really make sense to have two product teams working on different digital-media clients for the PC? I don't think so, and eventually, Microsoft may have to pick a winner. I thought that Zune had the inside track, but now I'm not so sure.

Images: A peek at Windows 7 release candidate

Updated 9:20 a.m. PDT, with comments from conference call and at 10:20 with additional comments regarding Silverlight and the iPhone.

Microsoft on Monday announced, as expected, that it is ready with a final version of its Silverlight 2 media player.

Silverlight 2 will be available for download starting Tuesday, Microsoft said. Among the new features are support for digital rights management technology, improved cross-platform support and deep zoom technology. Microsoft also announced a range of new partners including AOL, Blockbuster, CBS College Sports, Toyota, and Yahoo Japan.

Microsoft also disclosed some numbers for the Olympics work it did with NBC. Over a 17-day period, Microsoft said NBCOlympics.com had more than 50 million unique visitors, resulting in 1.3 billion page views, 70 million video streams, and 600 million minutes of video watched.

Overall, Microsoft said the Olympics helped boost Silverlight's U.S. penetration by 30 percent, the software maker said.

"We launched Silverlight just over a year ago, and already one in four consumers worldwide has access to a computer with Silverlight already installed," Microsoft developer unit VP Scott Guthrie said in a statement.

Still, that means Silverlight continues to have a very long way to go to compete with Flash, which is installed on nearly all Windows PCs.

On a conference call, Guthrie said that in some countries, Silverlight already has 50 percent penetration. He said he expected deployments would "accelerate quite nicely" as some of the sites that require Silverlight 2 get up and running. In all, he said he expects hundreds of millions of PCs to be running Silverlight 2 "very quickly."

"Certainly coming out with a new browser plug-in is an ambitious project," Guthrie said. "We knew it was going to take a couple of years to get where we need to be."

Guthrie said he feels pretty good that Silverlight is already at the one in four number and said that the company will continue to do deals to boost penetration, as it has with HP which includes Silverlight on its PCs.

Existing users of both Silverlight as well as the Silverlight 2 beta will be automatically be upgraded to Silverlight 2 over the coming weeks, he said.

Later in the call, Guthrie reiterated Microsoft's interest in trying to see Silverlight running on the iPhone.

"We have talked with Apple," he said. "We are very interested in being able to run on the iPhone."

However, he said that Apple ultimately controls what types of software run on the iPhone and right now they are not looking to enable browser plug-ins of any flavor. "They might in the future," he said. "Right now that isn't an option for any vendor"

Google's G1 Android phone is another story, Guthrie said. "That is an open platform," he said. "That is something we are going to look at."

As for compatibility with Google's Chrome browser, Guthrie said the initial release had a couple of issues with Silverlight, but he said that in the latest developer release of Chrome, Silverlight 2 works "fantastically well."

Disclosure: CBS College Sports is a unit of CBS, as is CBS Interactive, which publishes CNET News.

Stage 8H is best known as the place where Saturday Night Live is filmed. This week, though, it's been turned into an ad-hoc data center as part of NBC's efforts to stream thousands of hours of live Olympic coverage over the Internet.

Instead of the usual crop of comedians, NBC will have dozens of people watching every hour of the games, looking for highlights that it can chop up and make available on-demand. It's just one piece of an elaborate arrangement that shuttles the events in Beijing back to the U.S.

From each of the dozens of Olympic venues, a high-definition video feed is delivered over fiber-optic cables to the International Broadcast Center that has been set up in Beijing. A bunch of encoders and Windows Media servers get the video into an Internet-ready format. From there, it travels via satellite to NBC's headquarters in New York.

There, NBC actually adds a one-minute delay, allowing its cadre of live bloggers in Stamford, Conn., and elsewhere to write their text and have the video and commentary synchronized. Once ready, it goes from NBC to Limelight Networks, a content delivery network, which has 1,000 servers just for the live events sending the content to various Internet service providers, who then shuttle the content directly to their customers. (See chart below)

(Credit: Susan Dove/CNET News)

Making it play
Limelight Chief Strategy Officer Mike Gordon said his company is prepared for this to be the biggest live event the Internet has ever seen. "I would not be surprised at all to get 1 million viewers," he said. "We're certainly prepared for whatever the audience turns out to be."

Mike Gordon, chief strategy officer, Limelight Networks

(Credit: Limelight Networks)

That said, there is clearly an element of risk in all this, considering NBC's history of live Olympic streaming has been limited to broadcasting a single game, the gold medal ice hockey match in Torino, Italy, two years ago.

"NBC has always taken risks and is always trying to do more than it has in the past," said Perkins Miller, the NBC senior vice president in charge of the Internet push. "It does keep me up at night when I think about streaming 2,200 hours (of live coverage)."

The massive effort has come together in a remarkably short amount of time. Microsoft's deal to power NBCOlympics.com dates back only to January.

NBC had a pretty good idea what they wanted to do and had built some mock-ups of the player prior to deciding to partner with Microsoft.

Initially, they expected to use Adobe's Flash, given that is the standard for video delivered over the Internet these days. But, as they began to hash things out with Microsoft during a series of all-day meetings at NBC's 30 Rockefeller Plaza headquarters, Microsoft was able to show NBC some ways it could do more using its homegrown Silverlight technology.

Silverlight, Microsoft said, would be key to enabling NBC's vision of a "control room" in which a viewer could watch multiple live streams at once.

Perkins Miller, senior vice president, NBC Universal

(Credit: NBC)

Even within Microsoft's team, though, there was some apprehension of whether it was doable.

"Can we actually pull this off?" Senior Technical Evangelist Jason Suess recalled thinking. "Is the user's machine going to be able to maintain four connections at one time?"

The key, Suess said in an interview at Microsoft headquarters last week, is using an approach known as adaptive streaming in which the player has the ability to customize the bit rate of the video stream based on a computer's connection and processing power.

By Valentine's Day, they were ready for a test. It was pretty important that the test work out, given that NBC was getting ready to crate up the gear to ship it off to Beijing.

"That was the first time the player came to life," Suess said. "Obviously the player was extremely crude."

Making it pay
One of the last pieces to fall into place was the advertising. Initially, NBC and Microsoft were hoping to be able to insert full video ads into the live streams, but doing so is tough work.

"You don't have any way to pause a live stream," Suess said. "Trying to deliver a video ad on top of that, you hit the limits of a user's bandwidth."

As of mid-April, they were still struggling with what to do and began considering that perhaps they would have to just rely on companion advertising around the video stream. Then they came up with an idea. Rather than insert full videos into the live streams, what if they stuck a display ad into the video, particularly during dead times in the action.

Jason Suess, senior technical evangelist, Microsoft

(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News)

That, approach, which is ultimately what's being done, solved several issues. It was less bandwidth-intensive than video ads, but still got the advertiser directly in front of the viewer, all without interrupting any of the coverage. The amount of advertising will vary, Suess said; "It depends what is happening in the sports. We just wait for a dead space."

By early May, NBC made the basic player available on the Internet, using a variety of prerecorded Olympic video, and by early June the enhanced Silverlight player was made public as well. The Olympic Trials, at the end of June, offered the companies and the public a chance for a test drive.

At this point, it's come down to a triage of the few remaining known bugs. Each day, the bar is being raised in terms of what is a big enough deal to warrant such a late change. Suess, meanwhile, sent his wife and kids to visit family in New York so he could work 18-hour days.

In an interview last week, Suess said he had been at work until 1 a.m. the night before and gets in every morning by 8 a.m., so he can chat with the folks in Beijing before they sign off for the night.

"If I am not online and pushing things along, then I am introducing delay," Suess said.

An admitted type-A personality, Suess is a stickler for organization--the kind of guy whose desk is always clean. (His wife would probably use the word "compulsive," Suess said.)

Suess said he hopes things will be enough under control that he can actually watch some of the games, particularly sailing, of which he is a big fan. "I sure hope so," he said. "When I got involved in this project, that was one of the reasons."

Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.