Windows Media Services 9 raises bar for Apple, Real Media

Managing streaming-media servers isn’t child’s play. Just the chore of managing the content hosted on the server can be daunting, especially when the content changes frequently. Coordinating announcements, advertisements, and popular content can be enough to induce hair-pulling in even a veteran media-server manager. Add to that the need to ensure that client requests don’t swamp the server, and taking up a new profession may seem wise.

Businesses that deploy streaming media servers for external use — the BBCs and CNNs of the world — can afford to have a dedicated professional staff on hand to supervise the care and feeding of their media server farms. But smaller organizations now have a powerful tool at hand to allow the use of streaming media for their own purposes, be they customer presentations, training and development, or simple promotional stunts. The best news is that it comes in the Windows Server 2003 box (except in the case of the bare-bones Web Edition).

Windows Media Services 9 Series (WMS9) is the server-side component of the Windows Media 9 Series family, and it features straightforward management processes and supports a broad range of both audio and video formats.

WMS9 is much more robust than its predecessor, the Windows Media Services for Windows 2000 Server. Microsoft claims that WMS9 can support at least twice the number of concurrent streams possible than before — depending, of course, on the available bandwidth. The software giant cites the use of beta versions of WMS9 at MSNBC.com during the past year to back up its point. This means that streaming media providers can dedicate fewer servers to provide the same capacity, or they can support more users with the same number of servers.

The key word for WMS9 is “fast.” Microsoft has virtually eliminated the need for the extended buffering periods required by other media servers including Real Networks’ Helix and Apple’s QuickTime Streaming Server. WMS9 also allows users to fast-forward through streaming clips, reverse, or restart the clip without any appreciable delay.

Improved stream caching allows the WMS9 server to push as much data to the client as bandwidth will permit, reducing the likelihood that sudden network congestion will force an annoying timeout on the client side. Reconnect and recovery improvements further enhance the viewing experience, no matter how much latency is inherent in the connection.

Another improvement in WMS9 is the better manageability compared with the earlier Windows Media Services 4.1. Where the previous version depended on playlists processed on the client side, requiring an intelligent client, WMS9 uses a server-oriented model that features XML-based SMIL 2.0. This not only allows dumber devices to consume the content; it also permits on-the-fly changes to playlists for breaking news and customized content for a specific user or community.

Logging features are enhanced in WMS9 to provide better tracking and reporting features. This complements the improved support for advertising clips, including bumper, interstitial, and trailer ads; so not only can you make use of more advertising types, but you can also get better reports of the ads that ran.

My own experience with WMS9 was fairly painless. It installs easily from the Windows Server 2003 CD; the Configure Your Server dialogue automatically installed the software extensions and optimized the server’s configuration for WMS9. I found it simple to create playlists, manipulate content, and to use the administration tools, which can be accessed through a Web browser, a command-line script, or the graphical Microsoft Management Console interface.

Perhaps the neatest feature for an administrator new to deploying streaming media is the collection of wizards for common scenarios, including the creation of announcements, publishing points, and wrappers. These greatly reduce the learning curve for someone who doesn’t live and breathe streaming media, as in an enterprise where the primary business focus isn’t content creation and delivery.

But administrators accustomed to dealing with the relatively insecure Windows 2000 and its Internet Information Server 5.0 Web server will have to remember that by default, IIS 6.0 on Windows Server 2003 is much more tightly secured. Some tweaking is required before Windows Server 2003 would present even a simple Web page with links to WMS9-served streaming media to our clients; this was a nuisance, but not an obstacle.

Windows Media Services 9 Series raises the bar for streaming media servers by offering new features designed to enhance the viewing experience for the end user. Management and performance is greatly improved over the previous release of WMS. Although shops wishing to use Unix-based operating systems as the underpinnings of their streaming media servers — or the MPEG 4 media format — are more likely to choose Real Networks’ Helix, WMS9 cannot be ignored. It is ready for enterprise service and for prime time.