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F E A T U R E

Hardware or Software? Wading the Video Stream

March 18, 2002
By Darrin Woods

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Executive Summary


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Streaming Video

IP video has come a long way. The quality has improved dramatically, and the expense is relatively low -- even free, if you use software-based streaming-video servers. And digital video is not just for downloading clips from the Internet anymore. Within the past year, companies have begun exploring the use of video for a variety of internal purposes to drive down other expenses, such as travel, while giving employees access to videoconferences, training sessions and other high-quality visual applications.

But you can still expect a trade-off between the relatively inexpensive software servers from Apple Computer, Microsoft Corp. and RealNetworks and the pricier hardware-encoding solutions from Amnis Systems and VBrick Systems. Both hardware and software solutions provide good-quality video. The software solutions let video traffic run at lower bit rates than hardware encoders require, but there's a visual cost: Image quality degrades when it's transmitted at lower speeds.

Our review of streaming video options covers the three major software servers, Apple's Darwin Streaming Server 4, Microsoft's Windows Media Services and RealNetworks' RealSystem iQ. We also examine Amnis' NAC-3000 and VBrick's 3200 and 6200 hardware-based streaming-video solutions. Apple edged out its competition, while Amnis just barely beat VBrick on the hardware side.