Akamai steps up HD video delivery offering

UPDATED WITH FEEDBACK ON IPHONE HD VIDEO DELIVERY

Akamai announced an HD initiative at a press conference Tuesday that will allow delivery of HD content to Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight and iPhone video platforms. The HD video platform, which will use Akamai's extensive network of HTTP POPs, will deliver the bandwidth-heavy HD content closer to end users, increasing quality and lowering buffering times.

Contentinople notes, however, that Adobe's Flash Media Server 3.5 does not support HTTP video delivery currently and will not before the year's end. The company will offer clients the option of continuing to deliver content via Adobe's proprietary streaming protocols or the new HTTP-based Flash method, according to the article.

On the iPhone front, the company said it was employing variable bit-rate streaming to ensure smooth delivery of video content to end-users, even if their mobile data connection fluctuates in performance. Akamai gave little clues as to specifics on the iPhone delivery, including whether AT&T would be supportive of pushing HD quality video out over its rapidly congesting 2G and 3G cellular data networks. 

Dan Rayburn and Tim Siglin of Streaming Media have must-read posts about how Akamai's claims of HD video delivery to the iPhone are bogus. Akamai is basically saying the video that gets to your iPhone is HD because it started as an HD feed, though it's literally impossible, as Dan and Tim point out, for the end result to be close to HD. 

For more:
- see the Contentinople article here
- see the PC World article here 

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