Adobe upgrades, cuts price on video streaming software

Adobe Systems is announcing Tuesday its Adobe Flash Media Server 3 products, enabling streaming of high-definition video at a lower price point.

Instead of pricing its software at a range of from $4,500 to $45,000 as it was previously, the price now is at $4,500 and $995 for the two different versions of the product.

Due in January, the product line features Adobe Flash Media Streaming Server 3 for live and on-demand video streaming and Adobe Flash Media Interactive Server 3, for customized video streaming and multi-way social media applications. Flash Media Streaming Server 3 is geared to small- to medium-scale usage, while Interactive Server is a high-performance server.

Adobe also is announcing on Tuesday shipment of its Adobe Flash Player 9, codenamed "Moviestar," which supports high-definition video content via the H.264 specification.

Flash Media Interactive Server will cost $4,500, while Flash Media Streaming Server 3 will cost $995. Adobe Flash Media Server 3 features pre-built services to make it easier to stream Flash Player-compatible video. Also highlighted is support for H.264 and High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio.

Both versions of the server support advanced tracking to measure what people are watching and advanced seek for finding specific content in a file. Also part of the product family is Flash Media Development Server 3.0, a free product for developing advanced streaming or social media applications. It supports 10 simultaneous inbound connections.

With version 3 of the product line, bandwidth restrictions have been removed. "We're removing all the limits that we had before on bandwidth and connections," said Kevin Towes, product manager for Flash Media Server 3.  "In the previous version of the server, we licensed it for the number of connections you wanted and the amount of bandwidth that you wanted to stream."

"Both versions of the server, [the Interactive and Streaming servers] will have unlimited capacity," he said.

The Adobe Flash Media Server 3 platform also supports prerecorded and live streaming to Adobe Flash Lite 3, which provides video experiences on mobile devices, Adobe said.

Video-streaming in the enterprise has been serving four purposes, said analyst Melissa Webster, of IDC. These include executive communications to employees, training, recording and playback of conferences, and channel enablement, which provides extranet videos for partners for training.

"Flash is the fastest growing streaming technology/format today, every CDN (content delivery network) tells me this," Webster said. But it has cost extra to use Flash, she said. The lower cost makes Flash more attractive, she said.

The Flash Media Streaming Server product supports streaming of high-quality encrypted video, Adobe said. Also, the product supports streaming not only to the Flash player but also to Adobe AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime), which extends rich Internet applications to the desktop. AIR is expected to be available in early-2008, with the debut of Adobe Media Player.

The Media Interactive Server 3 software combines Adobe Flash Media Server 2 Professional, Edge and Origin Editions into a single product. Additionally, a new plug-in architecture integrates with rights management systems for real-time access control.

Load-balancing among multiple servers is enabled in Interactive Server.

Products in the Adobe Flash Media Server 3 line offer improved performance on Windows and Linux.