In its efforts to provide streaming services, M$ has come long way as from NetShow Services under Windows NT 4.0 to Windows Media Services 2008 to smooth-streaming under IIS7.
So you see a very gradual shift from traditional streaming protocols (RTSP, MMS, RTMP, etc.) to basic HTTP protocol based progressive streaming to now what is called as adaptive streaming which is enabled in IIS7 by installing Smooth Streaming IIS extension and a similar product by Move Networks' Adaptive Stream.
The HTTP based progressive streaming is widely used by YouTube and many similar video sharing sites. Even though its has benefits over traditional streaming protocols, but it has its own disadvantages which is very much addressed by adaptive/smooth streaming (won't bore u lot, so leaving up to u to find/read it.. he.. he..)
There is a nice demo uploaded at http://www.iis.net/media/experiencesmoothstreaming which show how smooth-streaming dynamically detects current network and local PC conditions, and based on it switches the video quality that Silverlight client plays.
To prove this new power of IIS, M$ did coverage for Democratic National Convention under its SilverLight client framework at http://gallery1.demconvention.com/ (u might hv to download MoveNetworks' player too) and later again did it for 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games at http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/ (though now you will have to search for it there as they are now getting ready for 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver ;-)
Then again M$ also teamed with Akamai to show case some of the best HD quality videos at http://www.smoothhd.com/
To encode such smooth-streaming videos MS Expression Encoder 2 (SP1) can be used, which has built-in templates too to enable smooth-streaming in any SilverLight app. So you, the flash lover designer, get up, jagooo, bcoz its time learn few new tools... ;-p
Its quiet interesting to understand how this adaptive streaming works and the benefits/complexities that comes with it, so do read more about it...
Happy Streaming!!!
;-)
