Solution Overview Industry Communications Scenario Broadcast Communications Business Situation IDT Media recognized a business opportunity in providing live news content to the corporate desktop. The company decided to develop a product that would allow businesses to use their current network infrastructures and computing platforms to distribute such programming content. Solution IDT Media deployed its product, called OTV™, using Microsoft Windows Media 9 Series. Benefits By taking advantage of Windows Media 9 Series features such as enhanced codecs, server-side playlists, and digest authentication, IDT Media was able to provide secure, high-quality content while reducing deployment costs and allowing a revenue stream from commercial advertisements. Microsoft Software and Services Windows Server 2003 Windows XP Windows Media 9 Series

IDT Media Uses Streaming Media to Deliver Live TV News to the Enterprise


IDT Media has successfully deployed a product that delivers live licensed television content to the corporate desktop using Microsoft® Windows Media® 9 Series. By taking advantage of new features such as enhanced codecs, server side playlists, and digest authentication, IDT Media is able to provide secure, high-quality content while reducing deployment costs and allowing a revenue stream from commercial advertisements.


The challenge: delivering live news content to the corporate desktop

IDT Media, Inc. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of IDT Corporation, a multinational communications company based in Newark, New Jersey, which provides services worldwide and has annual revenue of $1.5 billion. IDT Media provides radio programming, digital animation, and other media products and services.

IDT recognized a business opportunity in providing live news content to the corporate desktop. Such a solution serves businesses that do not want to undertake the expense of wiring offices or outfitting them with televisions and understand that its local area network (LAN) is the least costly and least intrusive system for distributing media.

IDT Media decided to develop a product that would allow businesses to use their current network infrastructures and computing platforms to distribute such programming content.

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Solution: meeting requirements for successful creation of a new product

IDT Media created a pilot of its OTV™ product to deliver licensed television content to enterprise users. IDT Media based the solution on Microsoft Windows Media 9 Series. With the help of Microsoft Certified Partner Approach Inc. , a consulting firm specializing in digital media solutions for enterprise clients, IDT Media built a Windows Media 9 Series lab to test specific features and further develop a plan for full-scale deployment. "We see a new business opportunity in streaming media-bringing television programming direct to the enterprise desktop," says Larry Wiseman, IDT Media's executive vice president of business development. "Instead of making expensive investments in satellite or cable TV, IDT Media's OTV customers can now take advantage of their existing networks to provide live world and financial news in the workplace. Windows Media 9 Series makes this practicable."

OTV is designed to use standard IP to deliver live video content and distribute it over any broadband network to business customers, and then to employees via their corporate LANs. OTV multicasts up to four channels of live licensed television content over the Winstar Communications LLC Internet service provider (ISP) network, which is owned by IDT, or over other ISP networks. During the pilot, two Winstar dedicated- Internet customer sites, a Winstar sales office, the offices of Talk America Radio Network, and internal IDT Media users validated OTV using Windows Media 9 Series. IDT Media used two servers based on Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 (which includes Windows Media Services 9 Series) and two Windows Media 9 Series encoders. OTV was deployed to 25 desktops running Windows Media Player 9 Series on Microsoft Windows® 2000 or Microsoft Windows XP. All OTV content originated from the IDT Media head-end in Newark, New Jersey, where it was captured in satellite receivers and then encoded and streamed from the IDT-managed data center. From Newark, OTV reached corporate networks through wireline and fixed wireless services provided by Winstar to IDT Media pilot customers and its own internal test users. Using multicast, OTV was delivered to customer desktops through these existing network paths.

IDT Media had four main criteria for the successful creation of the OTV product: the video must be at least VHS quality; four channels of video must fit within 1.5 Mbps (a single T1) of bandwidth; there must be seamless commercial insertion; and there must be reliable and effective customer authorization and authentication. With Windows Media 9 Series, IDT Media met and exceeded those requirements. IDT Media originally planned to deploy OTV on previous versions of Windows Media, so the pilot testing included comparisons of OTV on the respective versions.

Tests showed that all OTV instances running on different versions of Windows Media Player provided high-quality viewing. OTV met IDT Media's quality expectations and bandwidth target with a resolution of 320 x 240 at 30 frames per second at 359 Kbps.

Windows Media Player 9 Series improved the user experience further by virtually eliminating buffering before ads and when switching to program content because of Windows Media 9 Series Fast Streaming capabilities and pre-buffering of multicast content. In the OTV pilot, Windows Media 9 Series server-side playlists enabled IDT Media to easily provide customized advertisements to users during streaming. Windows Media 9 Series also provided digest security support allowing discrete authentication and tracking of users logged on to OTV. For unicast content (ads), digest security was successfully tested to support more secure authentication across the Internet and autonomous security domains of IDT Media customers.

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Benefits: delivering secure content using minimal bandwidth

Windows Media 9 Series has enabled IDT Media to deploy OTV successfully. Wiseman explains, "Windows Media 9 Series allows IDT Media to deliver OTV at a sensible cost-using the improved codecs and new features we can deliver secure broadcast-quality streaming content at very low bandwidths, plus we have an extra revenue stream made possible with the addition of seamless ad insertions." Server-side playlists allow IDT Media to seamlessly insert commerical advertisements into the live video stream to generate revenue in addition to subscriptions. New digest authentication technology provides reliable, effective client authentication, so IDT Media can ensure secure deployment and meet strict contractual obligations of the content providers, as well as reduce software engineering and acquisition costs. Windows Media 9 Series also gives IDT Media greater technical flexibility in meeting its business objectives and unforeseen opportunities as they arise.

IDT Media anticipates a January 2004 public rollout of OTV to 16,000 desktops running Windows XP using 20 Windows Server 2003-based servers and six Windows Media 9 Series encoders. OTV will be targeted at both medium-sized corporations and large enterprises.

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