Digital Rapids announces support for Microsoft Silverlight 3 in Digital Rapids' comprehensive range of studio encoding, transcoding and live streaming systems. Silverlight 3 support further extends the proven abilities of Digital Rapids' award-winning solutions for delivering unparalleled, high-quality, live and on-demand online video experiences.

Silverlight 3 is the newest version of Microsoft Corp.'s powerful platform for creating and delivering rich Internet applications and media experiences on the Web. Digital Rapids' solutions will enable content owners and distributors to take advantage of the video-related enhancements and features in Silverlight 3 to deliver rich, high-quality online viewing experiences.

Highlights of the new feature set include support for Microsoft Internet Information Services 7.0 Smooth Streaming, an HTTP-based platform that enables adaptive delivery of live and on-demand content to Silverlight-based video media players. IIS7 Smooth Streaming dynamically detects the best quality a viewer can receive based on their current bandwidth and local computer conditions, seamlessly switching between multiple streams at different bit-rates to deliver consistent, high-quality viewing experiences up to true HD even under changing connectivity and playback conditions. Live and on-demand IIS7 Smooth Streaming support will be available in the upcoming version 3.1 software for Digital Rapids' StreamZ and StreamZHD encoding systems. IIS7 Smooth Streaming will also be available in updates of the Digital Rapids Transcode Manager enterprise-class transcoding software and select models of StreamZ Live dedicated streaming encoders.

Silverlight 3 also augments its existing support for the VC-1 video format and Windows Media Audio with new native support for H.264 (also known as AVC, or MPEG-4 Part 10) video and AAC audio, allowing users to choose their preferred compression standard. Digital Rapids' encoding, transcoding and streaming solutions offer robust standard or optional support for H.264 and AAC encoding.