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Internet video provider Swarmcast partners up with Silverlight
Whether you're so burned out by the format war that you've sworn off physical media entirely or you want the instant gratification that only internet distribution can provide, you've probably heard about Swarmcast before. The company has great plans for HD internet video delivery and has shown some "proof of concept" with its Autobahn HD player for Flash. This week at Microsoft's web-centric MIX08 conference, Swarmcast announced that it is also partnering with Microsoft's Silverlight. Only time will tell if Silverlight's cross-platform reach will be enough to make it serious competition for Flash, but Microsoft's platform is gaining momentum.
Swarmcast intros Autobahn HD player for Flash
Just in case you haven't heard enough about Adobe's latest HD-enabled Flash release, Swarmcast has introduced a brand new player that supports the aforementioned technology while "protecting against video stalls and skips." Autobahn HD for Flash is a free, full-screen-capable player that is built on the firm's "patented multi-source streaming technology," which "dynamically adjusts the video bitrate to ensure that individual viewers are always watching the highest-quality video possible for their internet connection." Furthermore, the company will be making the source code available to the Flash community for those who'd like to modify it, and while a set date hasn't been announced, an OS X-friendly version of Autobahn HD should be ready soon.
Swarmcast granted patent for internet video delivery
Swarmcast has been granted a patent entitled "Packet transfer mechanism over a peer to peer network," which the company's marketing and PR has mercifully cast as the "File Swarming Patent." The patent protects Swarmcast's techniques for multi-source streaming of HD video over the internet. Patents being what they are, it's not entirely clear how Swarmcast's claims differ from other peer-to-peer approaches to efficiently getting lots of bits to end users, but we do know we'd like to see internet distribution of HD content grow. The development of infrastructure and protocols to get this done suggests some big players have interest in this as well. Yes, it is just a step towards our real bandwidth desires, but at least it's a step in the right direction.
