Real Helix Server Universal/Mobile

[seeley]

I have recently heard that Real Networks is making changes to add streaming support for Flash again, like they had in the past. This would then allow 1 streaming server soluton to stream QuickTime, Windows Media, Flash and Real as well as other media formats.

Benefits are less infrastructure, sharing of content areas, etc.

I am interested in hearing what your thoughts are about this, if you know of other solutions available that can be deployed at an organization that can act as a single streaming solution that would be able to stream many major formats and any other thoughts you may have.

I eouls also like this thread to serve as a good place to talk about Real Networks content delivery solutions.

[Dave]

You need to read the 'small print' when working with Helix Server.

If you look closely, it only supports a _subset_ of Windows Media. For example:
- it only officially supports MBR streaming with WM7
- it doesn't support streaming WM over the RTSP protocol

Some player object model features are broken, such as attempting to use the controls.currentMarker or controls.currentPosition properties to navigate through your media. After a long wait, it was fixed briefly (in 11.1.7 I think) but broken again in 12.0.0. Also there are on-going issues with hanging connections and CPU spikes when accessing WM streams via Helix which have been observed since version 11.

Support for client authentication/authorization, server-side playlists etc aren't there either, and some CODECs such as WM9 Image won't stream as expected.

Same applies to other content - support for h.264 but only up to 384kbps. MPEG-2 support was there at one point but then it was then withdrawn.

Sounds nice from the sales pitch, but in reality probably better to stick to seperate platforms.

Dave