[MPlayer-dev-eng] OT: Question about broadcasting server and player

[Hetz Ben Hamo]

Hi people,

Allow me to ask few questions here - I'm asking on this mailing list because I 
know all the best and brightest people in the video/multimedia are subscribed 
to this list - so I'll describe the situation and ask some questions if u 
don't mind...

I've been asked by a cable company about a solution for their subscribers to 
allow:

1. Get VoD (Video On Demand) through their cable by network (the cable company 
supplies an internet connection) so someone can either watch video on PC and 
probably later - on TV.
2. Multi platform client - Linux, Mac, PC.
3. Embedded solution - optional.
4. Streaming servers running on Linux, Solaris, SGI - you know the drift - 
anything that won't fail like tower of poker cards (hint - Windows), and can 
handle thousands of requests.
5. Fast, fast, fast encoding - there is a huge number of tapes to transform 
from Analog (broadcast tapes) to Digital format
6. DRM - optional. You'll never know if the suits want it or not...
7. Open Source - preferrable (and if possible - a company behind it)

I have considered 4 options:

1. Windows media server/client - the obvious disadvantages are: No official 
Linux client, No Linux/Unix server.
2. Real server/Real Player - costs fortune, haven't heard good reports about 
broadcast quality (PC full screen or PAL TV).
3. DivX - while I played with it and got some pretty good results, I didn't 
see any official server side real-time encoder, prices for server programs, 
etc...
4. On2 VP4, VP5 - looks good, but same issues as divx.

Are there any options that you recommend? 

Thanks,
Hetz