Hannes Preishuber

ppedv news: 6th training center opened in Vienna

Our company ppedv have the focus on Microsoft knowledge transfer. We are offering our services like training and coaching in Germany in 5 city's (München, Karlsruhe, Köln, Siegen, Burghausen). A few weeks ago we opened our new center in vienna (austria).

The strategy is to offer 5-star training and to work to 99% with full employed trainers.  From the history we had several famous book authors, MVP's and speakers like Shinja Strasser, Frank Eller, Tobias Ulm, Thomas Hauser and me (Hannes Preishuber).

We are still seeking for enthusiasts, who will grow with us and want to become a guru.

Strong signal for new VS 2008: Server too busy

Notebook display or mirror?

I have ordered the a new tablet pc for me. The product description says "non glare" anti reflective.

You can see the new Fujitsu T4220 right and my old T 4010 on the  left side of the picture. On the right side you can see the windows, the house, the red roove.

Does anybody can work with a display like that? I don’t understand the trend to brilliant, glare or whatever displays.

Streaming and possibility's with Microsoft plattform

in my last post, Scott have written  a comment "hmmm no". And this man know what he says. So its enough motivation to dig deeper into streaming and of course Silverlight media. My prior post describe some facts about Silverlight streaming on demand which ends up in a http progressive download by web server.

Now I am focus on real streaming which must be done by a real media server.  Indicators for streaming on demand are fast forward or rewind. Or live continuous broadcasts via streaming, like TV news.

Microsoft offers in windows Server 2003 a media server with such a service. But I didn't find any silverlight application sample in the web which uses 2003 server and supports repositioning of timeline. Some Silverlight sites like  channel9  have that option and they are using some mystic server named "Cougar". Cougar is the codename for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Small Business Edition!!! No- not Longhorn.

Silverlight Streaming Service, which contains "msbluelight" in DNS Name,  uses a media server "EdgePrism". Its not a Microsoft product. EdgePrism is made by LimeLightNetworks. And it supports no real streaming as defined before.

My summary is that  Silverlight reals streaming can only be done with Windows Server 2008. Your options are: via web server or streaming service. For IIS 7 exists a bandwidth throttling module called media pack to reducing traffic.

httpfiddler and Silverlight streaming

If you run httpfiddler, streaming like Silverlight streaming service, is broken. Since version 2, which is .net based, the new timeline extension is available. When you right click in the Timeline tab you can activate from context menu "enable fiddler streaming"

the truth about Silverlight Streaming

Just some quick note's about the silverlight streaming and the free service silverlight.live.com.

1) Silverlight media player doesn't support real streaming like media player does. Also if you can request mms:// a automatic fallback to http is done. Its more a simple download where the Silverlight have not to wait till completion.

2) The streaming from Silverlight streaming service is also a http progressive download and no streaming.

3) you can not place your timeline and start video stream from that location. Silverlight is always starting from beginning. And it's starts download ever and ever again.

4) don't put more Silverlight Media elements in your webpage (eg iframe). If a user is watching such a site (eg http://blogs.msdn.com/ptstv/)  downloads of every wmv file on page are started. (except 2 connection limit).

5) the creation of silverlight streaming application with expression media is a typical wizard result. A lot of code and mostly a working result. But if you try to change minor things (eg 16:9 video format) you are lost in hell.

prevent autoplay with Silverlight Streaming Service

With Microsoft Expression Encoder you can create Silverlight Media Web Projects. This projects can be zipped and uploaded to silverlight streaming service. Then you can embed the video in your webpage with iframe. My problem was, that i didnt find any option in Expression Encoder to prevent the automatic start of the video.

Workaround: you have to edit from expression encoder output folder the startplayer.js and set autoplay to false

 this._player = $create(   ExtendedPlayer.Player,
                                  { // properties
                                    autoPlay    : false,
                                    volume      : 1.0,
                                    muted       : false
                                  },

Save the file and create the zip. That have to be uploaded to streaming website.

You can also edit the file in the player templates, which change the defautl behaviour.