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Over the last year, a rather large part of my development work has included working with IIS Smooth Streaming, especially in relation to Silverlight. When I started looking at Smooth Streaming, about a year ago, there were not many places around the web where you could find Smooth streaming development related resources. And although the pictures is somewhat better today, there’s still not a whole lot of good material around, so I thought I’d try and putt together some posts sharing my experiences with Smooth Streaming development. 

There are two primary requirements for enabling a glitch-free viewing experience in Web-based, high-definition digital video delivery. First, the video provider needs to support high video delivery bit rates over the network. Second, the client computer needs to support continuous availability of processing capacity to decode the video at its fullest resolution.

The Smooth Streaming allows users to view the video at the highest quality possible based on their internet connection and CPU speed. If the users connection drops to a slower speed during the video, the Smooth Streaming seamlessly adapts to keep the video stream consistent and free of buffering.

This takes you through a condensed version of the why, how and what do I need to do of Smooth Streaming. If you want to try it for yourself you’ll need either IIS 7.0 or 7.5 (so Windows Vista, 7 or Server 2008), Expression Encoder 3 with Smooth Streaming (unfortunately the trial download doesn’t support Smooth Streaming) and Silverlight for the Smooth Streaming enabled player.

It’s just a few minutes into the opening night game and I am watching it side by side with my HD TV to get a comparison. The HD broadcast in Silverlight is quote impressive! But the features built into the Silverlight app are even more impressive. There is a chat window for fans, stats, videos, and game information on the right hand side of the video. There is also a button at the bottom named “Key Plays”. When clicked it displays an area that is reserved for recapping key plays in the game. The video, of course, has DVR features too.