Toshiba Corp reckons the others in the industry have got the concept of the video server all wrong, and has come out with a device with much less processing power than rivals, which it says as a result costs a fifth as much as high-end video-on-demand servers using parallel processors. Called the SmartStreamer, it is designed to be used to create low-cost multimedia information distribution systems and combines solid state memory for staging with disk arrays and Toshiba’s own Stream Switch Array built of application-specific circuits to transmit the video to as many as 250 user terminals. Toshiba expects to start volume shipments in the second half between $200,000 and $300,000.
