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RealNetworks Issues a Streaming Media Challenge

New software may start a legal battle, as it streams Windows Media files without a license from Microsoft.

Joris Evers, IDG News Service

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RealNetworks unveiled new software that can distribute streamed audio and video in a range of formats, including rival Microsoft's Windows Media format, and announced a shared source code initiative that is backed by a slew of industry players.

The software, called Helix Universal Server, removes the need to set up multiple servers to support various media formats, allowing users to consolidate their Internet media servers onto a single platform, the Helix Platform, RealNetworks says in a statement Monday.

Streaming services allow users to listen to audio or watch video over a data network without having to wait for an entire file to download, and can be used for broadcast or on-demand delivery.

Competing Formats

The move could spark a legal fight between RealNetworks and Microsoft as RealNetworks did not take out a license from Microsoft for its Windows Media format, but recreated the technology by investigating Windows Media streams, according to a report in The New York Times on Monday. Microsoft and RealNetworks have been battling for market share in the streaming media market.

Organizations that stream audio and video over the Internet today often have to install multiple servers to offer their customers a choice of formats. The most popular formats are Apple Computer's QuickTime, Microsoft's Windows Media, and RealNetworks' RealAudio and RealVideo.

Helix Universal Server supports over 55 media formats, including the most popular ones, and performs better than RealNetworks' own RealSystem 8 and Microsoft's Windows Media Server, according to RealNetworks.

Community Project

RealNetworks also announced the Helix Community, a shared source initiative intended to allow customers to adapt the software to meet their needs. Companies, institutions, and individual developers can license the Helix Platform source code and build Helix server, encoder, and client products, as well as enhance the overall platform, RealNetworks says.

The Helix Community will offer two license types; the RealNetworks Community Source License and the RealNetworks Public Source License. Products developed under the RCSL have to be compatible with Helix, while software developed under the RPSL has to be open source, RealNetworks says.

RealNetworks plans to make the source code of its Helix client available to the Helix Community within 90 days, followed by the server and encoder source code by the end of the year, the company says. RealNetworks plans to submit the RPSL to the Open Source Initiative for certification as an open source license.

RealNetworks' shared source initiative is supported by twenty-nine companies, including CollabNet, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, Sony, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and Hitachi, RealNetworks says.

Helix Universal Server is available Monday for various operating systems. Pricing is based on rated capacity measured in megabit per second. RealNetworks also released Helix Producer, software to encode media into RealNetworks' formats. Pricing of that product was not immediately available.

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