LONDON and REDMOND, Wash., Jan. 22, 2001 — Today at MIDEM 2001, the international music market, MediaWave Inc. and Microsoft Corp. announced that MediaWave is to build on its support for Microsoft® Windows Media™ Technologies with a massive deployment of over 3,100 Windows® 2000 Advanced Servers across its content delivery network. This deployment represents one of the largest deployments of Windows Media Services ever in Europe, with the capacity to eventually deliver millions of concurrent streams of audio and video in Germany, France, The Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. This additional streaming capacity for Windows Media-formatted content will help fulfill the rapidly developing demand for high-quality streamed audio and video content for consumers and businesses across Europe.
“Our customers demand the highest quality audio and video, while we depend on the best scalability and reliability to help drive our business,”
said Chris Frampton, chief executive and founder of MediaWave.
“Windows Media Services running on Windows 2000 delivers on both counts.”
MediaWave has grown rapidly over the past five years, delivering streamed audio and video for more than 1,000 events, company conferences and presentations broadcast on the Internet in the last year alone. MediaWave is the name behind all of Europe’s significant webcasts, including the delivery of Madonna’s record-breaking live concert at the Brixton Academy. Other artists recently webcast include Robbie Williams, Fatboy Slim, Oasis and Blur, while corporate clients today include the Scottish Parliament, P & O, Newcastle Building Society, Compuware and Lloyds TSB.
“MediaWave’s years of digital media expertise have powered some of the most high-profile webcasts in Europe,”
said Dave Fester, general manager of the Windows Digital Media Division at Microsoft.
“Its commitment today will help bring the industry-leading audio and video quality of Windows Media to millions of users throughout Europe and worldwide.”
MediaWave customers can be assured that their creative content is protected without sacrificing quality or the end-user experience. Offering the industry’s only true end-to-end secure digital media platform, Windows Media Technologies provides the highest audio and video quality at any bandwidth and integrates second-generation digital rights management technology with over 220 million secure Windows Media Players distributed worldwide.
About MediaWave
Established in 1995, MediaWave is one of the largest European providers of audiovisual hosting, webcasting and secure commerce enabling clients such as MSN® and P & O to broadcast archived and live events such as company presentations, training programs, conferences and investor meetings over the Internet or intranet. MediaWave’s unique technical expertise, developed over five years in the industry, combined with its network infrastructure has made Internet broadcasting more reliable and accessible.
About Windows Media
Windows Media is the leading digital media platform, providing unmatched audio and video quality to consumers, content providers, solution providers, software developers and corporations. Windows Media offers the industry’s only integrated rights management solution and the most scalable and reliable streaming technology tested by independent labs. Windows Media Technologies includes Windows Media Player for consumers, Windows Media Services for servers, Windows Media Tools for content creation, and the Windows Media Software Development Kit (SDK) for software developers. Windows Media Player, available in 26 languages, is the fastest-growing media player. More information about Windows Media can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmedia/ .
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device.
Microsoft, Windows Media, Windows and MSN are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
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