Inlet Technologies has been selected to provide Microsoft Internet Information Services Live Smooth Streaming online video for NBC Universal during the media company’s coverage of the XXI Olympic Winter Games from Vancouver, February 12-28. The announcement was made today by Perkins Miller, senior vice president, digital media, NBC Olympics; Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the .NET Developer Platform at Microsoft Corp.; and John Bishop, senior vice president of strategy and business development, Inlet Technologies.

Inlet’s Spinnaker family of encoding solutions is uniquely suited for live sports as it provides broadcast-quality streams over the Internet to multiple screens and devices. With its built-in support for adaptive streaming protocols, including IIS Live Smooth Streaming, Spinnaker generates high-quality streams that enhance online viewing of live sports action. For NBC’s coverage of the Vancouver Winter Olympics, Spinnaker will provide HD streams in real time at resolutions up to 720p. Spinnaker also will enable Olympic Winter Games fans on NBCOlympics.com to easily switch between multiple events.

Today’s online video experience has become much more interactive and personal, with the Internet no longer seen as a smaller screen television, but rather as a unique platform that can provide a richer experience. Spinnaker’s support of technologies such as DVR-like capabilities, instant replay, and IIS Smooth Streaming has been instrumental in boosting the quality of experience for end users. With Spinnaker, URLs or captions, such as scores and statistics, can also be inserted directly into the live stream.