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A hospitality application created for hotel in-room service using NetShow Theater Server. Other services are integrated with movies-on-demand, videos of Seattle, and hotel services.
The markets for interactive multimedia services range from video-on-demand, corporate communications, interactive training, and news delivery and video services for hotels and airlines, to more specialized applications such as advertising, kiosks, media archiving, and medical imaging.
A few common applications are described below, and custom applications can be developed to suit any need when rich video and audio content are called for.
- Make Web pages or in-house applications come alive with interactive audio and video multimedia content, from musical events, movies, and similar entertainment, to news.
- Training - Leverage corporate intranets and extend the reach of professional instructors by delivering training whenever students need it, anywhere the corporate intranet reaches.
- Advertising and Retailing - Advertise products and services much more compellingly than with static Web pages. Use full-screen video to guide users through demonstrations of a product, process, or the site itself.
- Hospitality - Replace and enhance traditional videotape-based systems in hotels and cruise ships. Systems can be customized to eliminate manual loading and delivery as well as to automatically track billing and usage. Systems can be integrated with other services such as Web browsing, e-mail, and games to enhance revenue potential.
A hospitality application created for hotel in-room service using NetShow Theater Server. Other services are integrated with movies-on-demand, videos of Seattle, and hotel services.
NetShow Theater Server offers significant advantages over outdated videotape-based systems, as well as traditional methods of delivering digital video and audio over intranets.
Most of the audio and video content currently hosted on intranets and Internet sites is downloadable, meaning that before it can be played, users must wait for the title to be copied from the server to their PC. In addition, users must provide the massive memory necessary to store the content before and after playback.
The streaming media technology employed by Microsoft NetShow Theater Server delivers content to the client as a continuous flow of data, minimizing the wait before playback and eliminating the massive storage requirements for rich content. In applications where the privacy or security of the content is required, streaming data provides the added advantage of not storing content on clients.
The software-based solution offered by NetShow Theater Server offers strength and flexibility that are unmatched in hardware-based systems. The advantages of implementing a software solution are numerous:
- Whereas other distributed video solutions require the installation of dedicated proprietary hardware, NetShow Theater Server runs on off-the-shelf commodity PCs. This hardware independence allows you to select the most cost-effective platform available, be it an existing network installation or competitively priced new servers.
- Software provides flexibility by adapting the system's capabilities to the evolving consumer marketplace. Unlike hardware, where even evolutionary changes can require a new product, software can be modified and implemented relatively easily.
- A software solution can readily migrate to new technology. Your system can take advantage of new, more powerful hardware, such as massive storage devices and faster microprocessors, as it becomes available. Likewise, as new software such as communication protocols becomes available, it can be integrated into your system.
In the Microsoft tradition of using open, industry standards and providing an extensible platform, NetShow Theater Server enables you to incorporate streaming multimedia into custom business solutions and value-added products. Using the Microsoft NetShow Theater Server software development kit (SDK), software developers can augment their own products with NetShow Theater Server functionality or provide compatible add-ons.
NetShow Theater Server can be scaled to run on a range of implementations, from a single PC, to a department-sized multiple-server system, to a large system designed to serve many thousands of users. As your organizational and user requirements grow, you can scale your video server installation, adding disks to enable more content to be stored, or adding servers to increase the number of users simultaneously watching video. As content servers and disks are added, capacity and bandwidth increase simultaneously.
NetShow Theater Server is implemented as a service on Microsoft Windows NT Server®. The media server software is tightly integrated with the Windows NT® operating system, becoming a component of a total network architecture that includes a series of content servers, a switched broadband network, and client PCs running Windows 95 or Windows NT.
Your system realizes all the benefits of the most robust, stable network operating system available, including a powerful set of content management and system administration tools that make the media server implementation easy to operate and maintain:
- Microsoft NetShow Theater Server Administrator's Tools
Web-based applications that monitor system utilization and performance, and provide administrative functionality, for example, to rebuild disks, and to connect or disconnect clients. You can also use these tools to monitor the NetShow Theater Server system for the occurrence of irregular events, based on the types of events the network administrator selects to be logged.- Microsoft NetShow Video Server Log Facility
Receives events from a NetShow Video Server system and redirects them to a Data Access Object (DAO) object for data analysis. The resulting .mdb file can be opened in Microsoft Access, Microsoft Excel, or any product that supports DAO format.- Windows NT Performance Monitor
Tracks and charts NetShow Theater Server performance counters.- Server-side Client Logging
Keeps a record of client connection statistics that can be integrated into Microsoft® Usage Analyst to track and report data.- Windows NT Event Viewer
Stores event alerts from the NetShow Video Server system. The Event Viewer's Event Log tool is used for logging critical system errors or failures.
As a component of a larger overall network structure, Microsoft NetShow Theater Server can be used in conjunction with other network and Internet services to leverage your investment in the installation and provide multipurpose applications for a wide variety of needs.
Because it supports both Switched Ethernet and ATM network technologies, NetShow Theater Server can stream video over the same networks as other corporate applications, such as e-mail, printing, and file sharing, provided that there is sufficient bandwidth.
Additional Microsoft BackOffice™ components, such as Merchant Server, SQL Server, or Microsoft Commercial Internet Services can be added to create a custom line of business applications or compelling consumer applications that take advantage of the NetShow server's system monitoring and administrative functions.
Using a single client player or front-end application, illustrated audio can be combined with NetShow Theater Server full-motion video and familiar Web functionality to create an exceedingly rich customer experience for advertising.
This white paper is for informational purposes only. Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, in this document. The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Microsoft Corporation must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of the information presented after the publication date.Microsoft, Visual Basic, Visual C++, Windows, and Windows NT are registered trademarks and NetShow, ActiveX, and BackOffice are trademarks of the Microsoft Corporation. Java is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. Other products and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.