Adobe vs. Real vs. Wowza: Comparing the Media Servers
For companies that are looking for a media server or thinking about making a switch, Streaming Media contributor Tim Siglin led a highly informative panel at the recent Streaming Media Europe conference in London. Siglin walked the audience through recent changes with Adobe, RealNetworks, and Wowza. He started with Adobe, where the Flash Media Server changed to the Adobe Media Server.
"The deprecation of the Flash name was to help Adobe do a couple things," Siglin began. "One, focus on any kind of media delivery, because they're effectively saying Flash player's not as important these days as it was. When I asked the question of Steve [Alison, Adobe technical evangelist] yesterday in the Video Infrastructure Summit, he said of course they still have the penetration. I believe they quote 97 percent. But the idea for moving to the Adobe Media Server is to understand that there are players out there for plug-ins that are not Flash that they want to deliver to."
The Adobe Media Server's changes go beyond the name. For one thing, Adobe is changing how AMS handles digital rights management (DRM).
"A couple of things that they've said they've done and are beginning to do. One of them is moving DRM down the stack to the encoder," Siglin said. "Traditionally the encoder has encoded, pushed it through to the server. The DRM has either been applied at the server, which is a relatively new thing, or it's been applied after the server. What Adobe is actually looking to do now is move that DRM back to the point where the encoder sits so that they can actually transmit it as encrypted or rights-managed. That's something that nobody else is doing at this point."
To hear more about AMS, as well as Real and Wowza's media servers, watch the full video below.
Comparing Multi-Format Media Servers
Tim Siglin, Co-Founder, Transitions Inc
This session will compare three well-known media servers: Adobe Media Server; Real Helix Server; and Wowza Media Server. We will look at iOS delivery, Android delivery, and Flash Player delivery. In addition, we will discuss the black box known as digital rights management (DRM) and how it affects mobile users on the go, at home, and in the workplace.
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