Source: RealNetworks, Inc. Web Site: http://www.real.com
RealNetworks Announces Breakthrough Advancements To RealSystem G2, Delivering The Future Of Broadband Quality TODAY
Dramatic Improvements in RealSystem G2 Provide Up To 250 Percent Increase In Viewing Capacity And Enables Broadband Quality At Half The Required Bandwidth
RealNetworksÆ, Inc. (Nasdaq: RNWK), the recognized leader in media delivery on the Internet, today introduced RealServerô 7.0 and RealProducerô 7.0, the latest advancements to RealSystemô G2, the award-winning cross-platform media delivery system. The powerful, patent-pending advancements in RealServer 7.0 deliver up to 250 percent improvement in server capacity, improved client connections, and reliability. These new improvements are designed to ensure rigorous scalability and unattended operation to meet the increasing demands of delivering high-quality media content over the Internet to a worldwide audience. RealProducer 7.0 delivers the quality of MPEG-1 video at half the data rate and delivers true VHS video experiences at 800 Kbps. The unparalleled and remarkable image clarity and sharpness delivered by RealSystem G2 has been realized through powerful DVD-derived encoding techniques incorporated for the first time in a popular Web video media system. ""These powerful RealSystem G2 breakthroughs provide the rapidly growing streaming media and digital delivery industry with an entirely new standard for scaleable, reliable Internet multimedia experiences,"" said Martin Plaehn, Senior Vice President, Media Systems, RealNetworks, Inc. ""The enormous gains we've realized in RealProducer 7.0 broadband encoding technology combined with RealServer 7.0's ability to operate in unattended production environments, provides the most comprehensive solution for Internet media delivery businesses."" ""RealServer 7.0 combined with Sun's family of Enterpriseô Servers and the Solarisô Operating Environment provides media companies, service providers, and enterprise customers the reliability and performance they require for the widespread usage and deployment of web media,"" said Doug Kaewert, Vice President of Market Development, Sun Microsystems, Inc. ""RealNetworks and Sun are making broadband media delivery a reality."" ""The video quality achieved with RealProducer 7.0 is truly outstanding, and we are thrilled to offer it to our customers as part of our high-bandwidth broadband solutions,"" said Jeff Schrock, CEO of Activate.net, a majority-owned operating company of CMGI, Inc. ""Our users can experience the future of Internet experiences today."" New Features In RealServer 7.0 Built on the open and extensible standards-based RealSystem G2 architecture, RealServer 7.0 enables the industry's first production-grade media broadcasting system with the following innovations: - Dramatic connectivity and bandwidth performance improvements to RealServer 7.0 deliver up to 250% greater viewing capacity than previous versions of RealServer G2, ensuring considerably more cost effective deployment, particularly in the multi-tiered distributed networks of splitters and RealProxyô caching systems that were pioneered by RealNetworks in 1999. - ""Non-Stop"" automatically ensures continuous backroom operations and resumption of streaming media deployment by restarting streaming processes when excessive machine load forces a shut down. The beta version of RealServer 7.0 Basic for Internet or intranets is immediately available for free download from http://www.realnetworks.com/. The beta version of RealServer 7.0 Plus is immediately available for purchase and download for $1,995 from http://www.realnetworks.com/. RealServer 7.0 is immediately available for the Windows NT, Linux, and Solaris platforms. New Features In RealProducer 7.0 RealProducer 7.0, the world's most ubiquitous tool and platform for producing high quality streaming audio and video content, now supports the creation of Internet video with breathtaking quality across the complete range of narrowband to broadband Internet connections. To meet the increasing expectations and burgeoning use of broadband media, RealNetworks and Intel developed and comprehensively enhanced the video compression and decompression technology central to RealProducer 7.0. ""RealProducer 7.0 and the Multipass/VBR capabilities of RealVideo G2 deliver the greatest single improvement in streaming media quality and efficiency this decade,"" said Richard Dougherty, Envisioneering. ""RealProducer 7.0 is fully optimized for broadband applications."" RealProducer is the world's standard platform for audio and video encoding and has been engineered into more than 100 products from over 75 worldwide software and hardware developers during the past year alone. RealProducer 7.0 includes an extensive array of enhancements. - Variable bit-rate (VBR) video compression improves the quality for live and on-demand video and is the first use of the DVD-derived video technology in an Internet media system. - Two pass video compression dynamically profiles input video content and then intelligently allocates bandwidth as needed resulting in superior Internet video output. Two pass video compression is the first use of DVD-derived video technology in an Internet media system. - Inverse telecine supports increased video quality removing unnecessary frames created when 24fps movie content is reformatted for 30fps NTSC broadcast. - Bandwidth simulator ensures content authors can ""preview"" audio, video and SMIL content across an array of simulated data rates to ensure known, high quality end-user experiences. Beta 1 of RealProducer 7.0 Basic for Windows is immediately available for free download from http://www.realnetworks.com/. The beta of RealProducer 7.0 Plus for Windows is immediately available for purchase and download for $149 from http://www.realnetworks.com/. About RealNetworks RealNetworks, Inc., based in Seattle, is the recognized leader in streaming media delivery on the Internet. It develops and markets software products and services designed to enable users of personal computers and other consumer electronic devices to send and receive audio, video and other multimedia services using the Web. Consumers can access and experience audio/video programming and download RealNetworks consumer software on the Internet at http://www.real.com. All RealNetworks systems and corporate information is located on the Internet at http://www.realnetworks.com. RealNetworks continues to maintain a strong leadership share of the streaming media market. As of December 1999, there are more than 90 million unique users of RealPlayerÆ and more than 85 percent of all streaming media Web pages on the Internet use industry leading RealAudioÆ, RealVideoÆ, RealFlashô, RealTextÆ or RealPixô, and more than 350,000 hours of live RealAudio and RealVideo programming are available each week (Source: Hotbot).