Precept Software Inc, Cupertino claims that its new FlashWare is the industry’s first general-purpose standards-based software that enables audio-visual data to be sent over existing packet- switched networks (CI 2870). The company also introduced IP/TV, the first in a planned family of client-server applications for FlashWare, which is designed to multicast live or pre-recorded audio and video streams to an unlimited group of desktops over any IP-based network. Critical of disparaging comments on the Windows system, the company claims Windows-based products are very well suited to the transport of multimedia data over the Internet, and are in the unique position of being specifically designed to eliminate the delays and breaks inherent in networks, and tolerate dropped packets. They are designed to stream video in real-time on enterprise intranets for high-quality transmission of computer-based training, distance learning, desktop videoconferencing and audio-visual production. Precept’s software-only approach uses standard protocols, interfaces and compression techniques as the basis for a suite of enterprise- quality multimedia networking software. FlashWare supports Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, FDDI and IP wide area networks. On the sending side of a data path, FlashWare takes in data streams, compresses them, converts them into packets and sends them over the network via a WinSock interface. At the receiving end, it accepts incoming packets, turns them into frames, decompresses them, synchronizes video and audio streams together, notes – and reports on – the quality of reception and issues prioritization requests to allocate the necessary network resources. The suite consists of FlashWare Real-Time Transport Services and FlashWare Multimedia Services and an optional WinSock-compatible FlashStack 32-bit TCP/IP VxD protocol stack optimized for multimedia data. FlashWare can be installed as a Windows Media Control Interface driver and costs $250 for the client, $400 for the server. The Windows 3.11 version is available immediately, with Windows95 and Windows NT available this quarter. FlashStack costs $40; the IP/TV Program Guide for program scheduling and management is $500.
