Intel gets Real on streaming video

Real Networks has licensed Intel's Indeo video compression technology for use in its forthcoming video streaming software, RealVideo GE. The Indeo Video 5 codec is designed to specifically leverage features offered by Intel's processors. Intel has always stressed the benefits to viewers of Internet-based multimedia of upgrading to faster Pentium II processors. The deal with Real Networks, supplier of one the most popular Internet audio-video technologies (certainly the best-known), gives it an opportunity to push that angle further. Real Networks, on the other hand, gets to use Indeo 5's Progressive Download technology, which allows the user to stream video of whatever image quality and framerate best suits their Net connection, irrespective of the quality of the source file on the server -- Indeo drops frames and further compresses the dataon the fly as it's streamed to the viewer. According to Intel, that makes it easy to use a single file to serve users on a wide variety of Internet connections. This scalability has been a part of Apple's QuickTime technology for the start, and was brought to Internet video streaming with QuickTime 3.0. ®