Smooth Streaming Beta Released!

I am pleased to announce the availability of Smooth Streaming beta! The hot new media extension for IIS7 can now be downloaded from http://www.iis.net/extensions/SmoothStreaming, in both x86 and x64 flavors. The Smooth Streaming beta is also available for install through the uniform Microsoft Web Platform Installer.

Smooth Streaming lead Program Manager John Bocharov has a detailed description of the IIS7 Smooth Streaming extension in his blog post. Other recommended reading: IIS.Net’s Getting Started, Exploring Bit Rate Changes, and Managing Your Presentations articles. 

This IIS7 extension is the final missing piece in the Smooth Streaming puzzle that we’ve been talking about since last October. Remember, it’s already possible to create on-demand Smooth Streaming content with Expression Encoder 2 SP1, and we are actively working on expanding this new format support to other 3rd party encoding products in the coming months. EE2 SP1 also features fully functional Silverlight player templates (with source code!) that enable Silverlight developers to easily add Smooth Streaming playback support to their Silverlight 2 apps. The IIS7 Smooth Streaming extension finally lets you also host Smooth Streaming content on your Windows Server 2008 servers!

Important note: IIS7 Smooth Streaming beta is only intended for testing purposes and doesn’t implicitly grant a “Go-Live” deployment license.

Finally: If you’re planning on attending MIX 2009 in Las Vegas this March, be sure to attend all Silverlight and IIS related sessions for other exciting announcements!