Thus to stream

Thus Plc, owner of the Demon Internet ISP brand, is to launch a fully hosted streaming platform in the coming months, the company said today.

The platform is apparently a commercial version of the technology used to broadcast the ‘Big Brother’ reality TV show last year. A project is currently under way to convert the original platform, which will be launched, ‘In the next couple of months,’ according to Steve Kennedy, Thus head of technology futures.

Kennedy continued: ‘Although we’ve had this technology for over a year now, rollout has been hindered by the upgrading of our UK network, which can now more ably support such services on a large scale. We have also been developing peering agreements in Europe and are looking at more if necessary.’

The company recently did a deal with Apple to include its Demon access software in every new Mac. Kennedy commented: ‘Of course this is a good market for streaming - all Macs are ready for multimedia publishing, so it made sense to provide the space and streams for Quicktime. Equally, the streaming market is a good one for us, as it increases data transport volumes.’

However, Kennedy does concede that Quicktime is not necessarily the market winner: ‘It’s not ideal for our hosted service platform, as not many live events are streamed using Quicktime. However, it is open source, which can be very attractive for some customers. MS is free too, although there is a hidden cost as you have to host it on NT boxes! Real costs quite a bit, but then it is very reliable, easy to manage and has a huge installed, paying user base.’

Thus claims to have been the first UK licencee of a Real server back in 1995, under the name of Progressive Networks, and has been offering two free Real streams with dial-up free web space on connection since 1996.