Robin Mestré

ENGAGE CUSTOMERS IN YOUR BRAND AND CONTENT WITH RICH MEDIA, HIGH PERFORMANCE GRAPHICS, AND ANIMATIONS.

Media Experiences include custom media players embedded in a Web site for viewing by Mac OS and Windows users on a range of Web browsers. Windows Media audio and video streaming can be combined with transparent overlays and new ad-insertion technologies. Personalized news tickers, DVD-like interactive menus, captioning, custom rating, and community features can be seamlessly displayed in a traditional browser window, or experienced full-screen at the click of a button. For example, today HSN.tv features live streaming using Windows Media Services together with Silverlight for rich interactivity.

HSN sells goods via television 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Products are presented by hosts on the Network's category-specific shows, produced in the company's studios located on their campus in St. Petersburg, Florida, and telephone orders are taken by representatives working at the company's multiple inbound call centers. The company has been wildly successful, with a steady growth rate and annual sales for 1999 of more than $1 billion.
"HSN bet that by migrating to the Microsoft platform we would improve online sales by offering HSN's complete product line and increase customer growth by ensuring that the site was operational 24/7," noted Jack Kirby, president of HSN Interactive. "We are very excited that as a result of developing and hosting the HSN Web site… we have incrementally increased e-commerce revenue by 5 percent and decreased overall hardware, software and IT operating expenses by 43 percent. We are now on track for exceeding our year-on-year growth projections."

DELIVER HIGH-DEFINITION VIDEO IN YOUR CHOICE OF INDUSTRY STANDARD FORMATS: VC-1, WINDOWS MEDIA AND H.264. LEVERAGE YOUR EXISTING WINDOWS MEDIA LIBRARY, WORKFLOW, AND INFRASTRUCTURE WITH SILVERLIGHT FOR PUBLISHING TO THE WEB.

Consumers can enjoy HD-quality experiences based on Windows Media Video, Microsoft’s implementation of the SMPTE standards-based VC-1 video codec. Silverlight is compatible with millions of hours of existing Windows Media content, so content owners can continue to use their existing assets and investments in media technology while they build and deploy new Silverlight-based experiences. Silverlight also plugs into the latest advanced HTTP-based delivery techniques such as adaptive streaming where video is streamed in multi-second video segments, cached on the network, and then re-packaged on the client. Additionally, Silverlight can plug into hybrid CDNs (content delivery networks) and peer-to-peer delivery technologies, where consumer PCs can act as servers to distribute video to other consumers. With support for advanced streaming techniques, end-users get higher quality and more efficient RIA and media experiences.

Microsoft partnered with MSNBC to provide Silverlight technology to stream all video for the 2008 Olympics Games. Because Silverlight can stream live content with HD quality and has the capability to integrate real-time blogging, video alerts, and complex metadata overlays, the technology provided NBC with a superior end user experience, resulting in greater viewer “stickiness”

While sites using other, non-Microsoft technologies had a viewing experience that lasted an average of 3 minutes per user, on the NBCOlympics.com site, the average viewing time was over 27 minutes per user. According to Perkins Miller, Senior VP, NBC Olympics, the Silverlight-powered NBCOlympics.com site "crushed every U.S. digital record for a major event. Nothing even comes close."  In just 17 days, NBC said that its Silverlight-powered Web site had: 1.3 billion page views; 50+ million unique visitors and 70 million streams.

CREATE COMPELLING, STATE OF THE ART VISUAL CAMPAIGNS USING DEEP ZOOM TECHNOLOGY.  VISITORS CAN NOW EXPLORE YOUR CONTENT LIBRARY WITH EASE, SPENDING LONGER ON YOUR SITE THAN EVER BEFORE.

The new Deep Zoom technology in Silverlight allows users to see images on the Web like never before. The smooth in-place zooming and panning that Deep Zoom allows is based on advanced technology from Microsoft Research and raises the bar on what image viewing should be. Deep Zoom allows people to see images on the Web like they’ve never seen them before – visualizing huge amounts of information and enabling people to intuitively dive further and further into the image.

At its simplest, Deep Zoom allows a user to seamlessly drill into different levels of detail of an image without loading the entire image file all at once – they are automatically given just the parts of the image that are required, vastly increasing performance and saving bandwidth.

It is possible through the Deep Zoom Composer utility to take multiple images of varying sizes and resolutions and composite them into a single image that can contain unprecedented information density. Possible applications include microfiche-like libraries of books and publications, engaging “Spot the Difference” ads, and product brochures that show big glossy images at the surface but have all of the detailed inset images and text nested inside at a deeper zoom level. As an interested user zooms in to see the image details, they can peruse the technical details or marketing descriptions of the product they are looking at.

Deep Zoom goes even deeper, though. For consumption of static information and images, Deep Zoom dynamic collections take it to the next level. Dynamic collections allow on-the-fly composition of images in the browser as the user interacts with the images. This means that you can freely combine high resolution images, dynamic text from a Web service or other data source, and controls and UI. The user can interact with these in real time, with smooth scrolling and natural animations. Zoom level becomes a basic attribute of the application, enabling entirely novel experiences in a Web application.

Silverlight is the only Web technology that makes all these experiences possible.

Hard Rock Café has built their brand on its massive collection of memorabilia – more than 70,000 pieces of rock and roll history displayed at 146 restaurants and venues around the world. They wanted to drive home the authenticity of this brand, give users a sense of the depth of their collection, and differentiate themselves from mass-market theme restaurants and hotel chains – so they launched a new brand campaign and Web site that brings all of these artifacts and memories to life.

“Once we saw Deep Zoom in action, there was no longer a debate about which technology we would use,” explains Michael Lemme, Creative Director at Duncan/Channon. “Deep Zoom doesn’t just approximate the real-life experience people have at Hard Rock, it goes even further so that fans can get closer and interact with pieces in ways they couldn’t in person.” And, most amazingly: by working on the Microsoft platform, they built the content management system and infrastructure to deliver this great experience in just 30 days.