However, there have been some little lingering problems with iOS that frustrated our hosting clients and bugged us too. Native video implementation on iOS differs on the iPad and iPhone. For instance, issues with mobile video for developers is that if you have a dropdown menu element on the same page as a video element, and the dropdown menu opens over the video, then you can’t click the menu. The video startup on iOS isn’t ideal: it starts with a black screen, then moves to a still image, then a play button. Since our customers often put in the effort to customize our HTML5 player, we want their video playback to stand out from others. We want our play button with the functions you wanted to include, color you chose, etc.

GravityLab now can design iOS video customizations, and assist our clients in deploying them. But what about optimized video playback in iOS devices?

Designed into iOS software, the built-in video player now supports adaptive bit rate switching during playback. As a user watches a video on their iPhone, iPad, or iPod device, the iOS player will detect the user’s available bandwidth and automatically switch to the appropriate bit rate during playback. This process provides for a much better viewing experience: higher quality (bit rate) videos streamed for faster WiFi connections while lesser quality videos are streamed in low bandwidth situations such as is the case with AT&Ts 3G network (especially in San Francisco). And, Apple’s version of adaptive bit rate streaming can be utilized by any HTTP server.

Apple calls this Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming (HLS). To take advantage of this, you need to create a set of files including a master .m3u8 streaming instruction file, a .m3u8 file for each bitrate you have specified , and all the video segments (MPEG .ts) in the duration specified. The rest is Apple magic.

GravityLab includes Apple’s iOS Advanced HLS Streaming:  When a compatible iOS devices visit your GravityLab powered video we do not simply serve up a single bitrate iOS compatible video file.  GravityLab prepares your video for both an iPad and iPhone adaptive bitrate stream.  Apple’s HLS Streaming prepares your video into 4 bitrates each in 10 second segments and will dynamically serve the bitrate most appropriate to the bandwidth of the individual client.  This means that if a user has a high bandwidth environment they can enjoy beautiful high bitrate video content on their iPad and if another user is trying to watch the same video on a 3G connection they will have a smooth video experience watching a lower bitrate version instead of the dreaded stuttering and stopping.

Today, HTML5 is essential to serving video to audiences browsing the mobile Web. HTML5 and H.264 are the runtime/format combination that you have to support. And while the mobile market is fragmented, iPhone and iPad users represent an attractive audience demographic of early-adopting, technologically-savvy users that tend to fall into higher income brackets. So yes, if you care about mobile Web video at all today, you’ll need to consider an HTML5 support strategy.

Take a look at our Mobile Video Hosting plans here.

By becoming a GravityLab mobile video hosting client,we can help you deliver live and on demand streaming to every screen. Let us help you:

• develop an effective and efficient streaming mobile device strategy
• simplify video delivery to mobile devices
• increase views and reach a broader audience with mobile video
• overcome the challenges for monetizing video to mobile

Get started with GravityLab Mobile Streaming Video Hosting today !

• HD quality with H.264 and AAC
• Adaptive bitrate
• Support for a wide range of http delivery products
• Live streaming with DVR support
• On-demand streaming with enhanced seeking
• Client tracking and reporting
• Open Source Players Available
• Multiplatform browser, desktop, and device support
• Linux and Windows Server® support
• MP4 standard format … open standards

Content Delivery Network scalable delivery:

Use existing caching infrastructures and standard HTTP server hardware to deliver on-demand and live content on a large scale with maximum quality.

Go way beyond progressive download delivery:

Enjoy enhanced playback features including adaptive bitrate streaming, live support, DVR functionality, and interactive seeking over HTTP connections.

We support open source:

Achieve a live streaming experience using MP4 fragment format, the industry standard for adaptive bitrate delivery.

Want more information? Check out the FAQs. Ready to get started with HTTP Streaming hosting?

Eugene, OR – March 27, 2011 — GravityLab Multimedia, the world’s most cost effective and most reliable content delivery network (CDN), today announced full support for HTTP live and on-demand streaming to the Apple iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. Today’s announcement includes full support for Apple’s new iOS 4, keeping GravityLab poised to meet surging market demand for streaming to millions of Apple iOS devices, including the iPhone and iPad.

“It’s important for us to make HTTP streaming to iOS as simple to deploy as possible for a wide spectrum of users, from technical web developers to non-technical users.” Said JD Hauger, director of Media Services.

Whether streaming audio or video, live events, or sending secure on-demand content with encryption and streaming server authentication, the parity between of Apple and GravityLab Multimedia means anyone, anywhere can deliver efficient, high quality video to every Apple portable devices.

GravityLab’s iOS 4 support includes http dynamic stream technology, which is supported by the media player built into Apple iOS 4. Http dynamic streaming selection lets an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch automatically switch between different bit rates depending on the device’s current connection speed. By switching bit rates as needed as network conditions change, Your audience and video stream is far more likely be a clear and buffer free viewing experience, whether connecting through AT&T’s EDGE, 3G, Verizon or Wi-Fi.

GravityLab Multimedia’s streaming customers can now deliver video streaming to all Apple iOS 4 devices. Streaming media to some of the world’s most popular consumer devices is very appealing, and doing so via a global CDN brings significant competitive advantages. GravityLab uses global load balancing and automatically routes users to the streaming server and datacenter fastest and closest to them. This ensures that Apple iOS devices receive a clear, uninterrupted experience, free of the usual issues related to network congestion or long distances between viewers and streaming video content servers.

HTTP streaming for Apple devices is available to GravityLab clients for both live and on-demand content. To learn more, visit, contact us today.

About GravityLab Multimedia:
Delivering streaming video to every screen, everywhere, GravityLab is the world’s most reliable content delivery network. To learn more, visit www.gravlab.com.

HTTP Live Streaming, iPhone, iPad, iPod, and iOS are trademarks of Apple, Inc.

Media contact:
J.D. Hauger
(541) 914-2012

Considering this new aspect of live television, it’s only natural to look toward the same experience on the web. GravityLab will change the way we watch, interact, and monetize live streaming on the web.

Flash Media Server has always had the ability to archive a live stream on the server for On2/Sorenson based content. Flash Media Server can now archive H.264/AAC content too. DVR functionality extends this basic archive function by allowing you to watch the stream as video on demand as it’s being written to the disk. You can pause, play, and seek around the video cache, as if it were a prerecorded stream. You can even insert cue points to manage advertising (for example, disabling the seek bar when ads are played).

The most exciting part of this feature is the ability to scale. If you choose to deploy the Edge caching technology of Flash Media Server or manage your own large cluster, this functionality is easy to deploy using the automatic caching technology or manage by creating custom plug-ins.

From the client side, nothing special is required. When your live event is over, you can take the DVR cache and make it available as a VOD stream.

GravityLab’s live flash video DVR functionality. Changing the way your broadcast on the web.

What’s new for 2011? We took a new approach. We identified a smaller number of strategic global locations near primary Internet Exchange Points, and built supercharged points of presence we call SuperPOPs. These SuperPOPs have massive amounts of computing and caching power and are directly connected to all the major backbone fiber networks.

The result is a blow your mind fast streaming content delivery network that’s custom built for mobile delivery, streaming video, and large multimedia files that need to be distributed globally. Our new globally distributed network means your content is just milliseconds away from almost every broadband user in the world.

So what exactly are we talking about? For starters, we’ve added the following POPs to our CDN that your content is cached on and delivered from automatically :

North America: Los Angeles (2), San Jose, Seattle, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, Ashburn and New York

Europe: London (2), Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam

Asia: Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore

Australia: Sydney

So what does that mean?

Our Content Delivery Network for video and media delivery truly is global, with our SuperPOPs (points of presence) located on four continents. These concentrations of optimized streaming servers are located at integral Internet exchange points and are just milliseconds away from almost every broadband user on the planet. Because our SuperPOPs are located directly at the world’s fastest data interchanges, we are able to deliver more content with less overhead than other CDNs. Our CDN is efficient, scalable and the reason why we routinely outperform older CDNs in performance tests while remaining price-competitive.

Not only have we placed our POPs inside the same data centers where the major backbone providers peer with each other, we have also signed peering agreements with the majority of the global carriers. Our tactic – physically distributing our high end video streaming caching servers at the carrier interconnection points, while peering with the carriers – means we can offer mind blowing speed, the industry’s lowest priced delivery, and stream your media to even the most remote geographies.

Our business model is not complicated – We buy our bandwidth in huge amounts and parcel it out for you to take advantage at wholesale prices. We bundle that bandwidth with our optimized streaming video servers strategically located around the globe. In addition to the low bandwidth pricing, the caching of your content around the world, the highest end new tech video servers, you also get to take advantage of our team of experts’ knowledge of media delivery.

You simply add video to your account and we do all of the heavy lifting to support advanced video delivery to Apple mobile devices.

Designed into iPhone OS 3.0 and 4.0, the built-in video player now supports adaptive bit rate switching during playback. As a user watches a video, the iPhone player will detect the user’s available bandwidth and automatically adjust to the appropriate bit rate during playback. This process is a much better viewing experience: higher quality (bit rate) videos are streamed for faster WiFi connections while lesser quality videos are streamed in low bandwidth situations such as is the case with AT&Ts 3G network. We can even encode your video so that it fails over to an audio only stream for weak cellular signals if necessary. You reach everyone, everywhere on iOS.

Apple calls this Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming. To take advantage of this, you need to create a set of files including a master .m3u8 streaming instruction file, a .m3u8 file for each bitrate you have specified, and all the video segments (MPEG .ts) in the duration specified.

GravityLab does all the encoding work for you, automatically.

For more information about Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming encoding services at GravityLab, take a look at our iOS video hosting plans.

It’s difficult to deliver video to wide range of mobile devices. Mobile video quickly turns into a user experience nightmare. There are thousands of mobile devices and the diversity is increasing every day. What video format will play on what mobile device? Too often, users get videos that will just not play (“Video format not supported”) or playback is of unacceptable quality. GravityLab’s Mobility platform is the solution.

When a video is requested by a mobile device, GravityLab’s Mobility detects the device and optimzes the video specifically for that device and transcodes on the fly. Mobility ensures that your users – whether on the latest smartphone or on a more basic handset – instantly get the most optimal mobile video viewing experience.

Mobility uses a proprietary databases with 7000 mobile devices that have been visually tested to ensure the video is delivered to the screen using the optimized screen size, the optimized streaming video format, and the correct protocol. New devices are continuously updated and added. GravityLab’s Mobility does not require any client application to be installed by your users.

GravityLab’s Mobility is a simple solution to deliver content in a complex mobile ecosystem.

Interested in delivering video to thousands of different mobile devices? Contact us today.

• Mobile subscribers watching video on a mobile phone year-over year growth is a notable 51.2%
• Over half (55%) of the mobile video audience is aged 25-49, not teens as some might think
• Simultaneous usage of television and PC remains fairly constant
• Broadband: 63.5% of homes now have broadband Internet access, with high-speed connections that improve online video delivery
• Smartphones: Nearly a quarter of households (up 38% year-over-year) have smartphones (mobile phones with advanced operating systems), making it easier for consumers to “place shift” and watch video wherever they are

Trends to Watch:

• As smartphone penetration continues to proliferate, consumers will be increasingly using these devices (versus PCs) to access the Internet
• With networks beginning to develop loyalty programs for their shows (via apps, etc.), social media will play a larger role in audience engagement
• 3D televisions and content hitting the market may cause a change in viewing behaviors and programming demand for a small but important audience segment
• The emergence of other connected devices, including tablet computers like Apple’s popular iPad, will create additional options for media consumption anytime, anywhere

“Beyond the TV, technology is helping drive video use on the ‘second’ and ‘third’ screens. The proliferation of broadband access is bolstering online video, creating an alternative mass outlet for distributing television content and ‘timeshifting’ long-form TV. Similarly, the increased popularity of smartphones has created yet another opportunity for distributing video of all kinds outside of traditional broadcast and cable TV airing times and places. In an era when many feel the quality and diversity of video content is at an all-time high, it’s clear that there’s more at work than programming alone. Technology enhancements also contribute significantly to the quality of the consumer experience—yet another reason today’s consumers watch more video, across time and place, than ever before.”

Q1 2010 Highlights:

• The amount of time spent watching television is still increasing: viewers watched two more hours of TV per month in Q1 2010 than in Q1 2009
• Average time spent simultaneously using TV and Internet in the home grew 9.8%, to 3 hours and 41 minutes per month
• The number of people who are timeshifting has grown 18% since last year to 94 million, with theaverage user now timeshifting 9 hours and 36 minutes per month
• The mobile video audience grew 51.2% year-overyear,surpassing 20 million users for the first time
• 52.7% of US homes now have HDTVs and receive HDTV signals

Read the entire Nielson Report here