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No. The current implementation of the Viametrix Virtual Network™ (Vivian™) does not store any audio or video files on any end-user PC.

Currently, the Microsoft Windows Media 9 Series is supported by Vivian.

Please check http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/default.aspx for additional information on the free encoder and player offered by Microsoft.  Using Vivian for broadcast streaming does NOT require the purchase of any additional server software.  Many currently streaming with existing industry-standard hardware will find that they can reduce or eliminate equipment already in service by using Vivian broadcast solutions.

Viametrix offers multiple audio and video streaming products and hosting services.  This enables us to best meet our customers’ needs. The variables that need to be considered in determining the cost of use for our streaming products/services include:

• the maximum bandwidth requirements of the terminal stream to end users
• the total number of concurrent end users desired by the broadcaster per station 
• the minimum PC hardware requirements to install and run the Microsoft Media Encoder
• the minimum PC hardware requirements to install and run the Vivian™ Broadcast Broadcast server and number of station licenses of your choice (only applicable if licensee/contractee is hosting vs. Viametrix)
• license fee payable to Viametrix, Inc. to broadcast using Vivian™
• the cost of the broadcaster's bandwidth, i.e., bandwidth of stream desired to be delivered to each end user (terminal stream)
• any royalties or other payments due to the streamed content owner/licensor (if any)
• any specialized add-on features needed by the client (you will be pleased with the standard features that are a part of every Vivian Broadcast license)
• content production costs

Vivian™ provides the absolute lowest total commercial cost of media delivery options available while providing a high level of quality of service (QOS) experience for your audience.

Management of a Vivian™ Broadcast Station is made easy and accessible by using browser-based tools.  Using features available with all Vivian™ offerings you may:

• Manage your station using browser-based tools
• List your broadcast stream in the Vivian™ Channel Guide
• Implement basic password access for your stream (whenever and if desired)
• Create and manage the playlist for your broadcast station
• Realtime reporting of audience members - how many at any time
• Configuration (managing IP addresses and ports)
• Manage your account on-line 24*7 (upgrade, view orders, invoices, etc.)
• Access Viametrix Knowledge Base

Vivian broadcasts are accessible to prospective broadband audience members around the world who have the free Windows Media Series 9 Player (over 50m copies have been downloaded so far) and the bandwidth required for your broadcast. Although Vivian broadcast solutions are targeted at broadband users (over 40m Internet users now have broadband access in the United States) the ActiveX control that each audience member needs is well under 200K in size. As enhancements are made available by Viametrix, the ActiveX control is automatically updated when audience members access any Vivian broadcast - ensuring that your audience members have access to new features and functionality as soon as they are available.

Unlike file sharing networks, no media files are stored on Vivian users' PCs and no PC resources (e.g., CPU, RAM, bandwidth) are utilized or required unless the user is actually viewing or listening to a Vivian broadcast. CPU and RAM requirements for Vivian are virtually non-existent. Vivian broadcasts are targeted to support broadband audiences as opposed to dial-up.

Audience member privacy is important to Viametrix. We don't collect any personally identifiable data from audience members. Please see our Privacy Policy.

Delivering a high quality experience to audience members is of significant importance. Vivian constantly monitors the bandwidth availability and adjusts the network automatically for each audience member to ensure the highest quality experience. Our technology also ensures the fastest available media delivery startup.

For audience members with questions or Vivian technical support needs, Viametrix provides 24*7 access to Frequently Asked Questions and our Support Knowledgebase.  Support for audience members is also available via email.

In keeping with Viametrix' philosophy of giving Vivian™ broadcasters as much control as possible over their content and broadcast at the lowest cost, a browser-based online broadcast management center is an integral part of broadcasting with Vivian™.

This facility provides Vivian™ broadcasters with the ability to manage all aspects of their Viametrix account, all of their broadcast stations and get technical/customer support from any PC with access to the Internet 24*7.

Streaming media, by its very nature, does not store any media files on any audience-member's PC. If audio and video files are not stored, they cannot be re-broadcast by audience members.

As a standard feature for all Vivian™ broadcast stations, the broadcaster can establish a password which must be provided by prospective audience members prior to accessing the station.

Each Vivian™ broadcaster can limit access to the broadcast by providing the password only to those who have paid for access using the broadcaster's own PayPal or other merchant account of the broadcaster's choosing. This may be changed 24*7 as often as the broadcaster chooses via the Vivian™ Broadcast Management Center.

Viametrix may provide a more robust DRM solution or support third party DRM solutions in the future.

Every computer connected to the Internet has a unique identifier called an IP address. Many times the IP address is consistently assigned (static) to a computer. On other networks, a random IP address is assigned each time a computer connects to the network. This is referred to as a dynamic IP address. If a computer address is dynamically assigned, the IP can change frequently. Anyone trying to access that computer from the Internet would be unable to do so consistently without dynamic DNS support.

Because there are many more Internet users than there are publicly accessible IP addresses, many broadband service providers only include dynamically-assigned (only while a user is actively connected to the Internet) IP addresses in their basic service offerings. They may charge extra to permanently allocate one or more specific public IP addresses to their subscribers.

Viametrix provides dynamic DNS support for Vivian broadcasters as a standard feature. This also means that Vivian broadcasters are NOT required to maintain a web site or own a domain name to broadcast audio and video over the Internet.

The patent-pending Viametrix Virtual Network™ creation and management technologies are the foundation components that enable the most efficient network node management and bandwidth use. By using artificial intelligence in each network node, a dynamic content delivery network is created and maintained automatically for each Vivian™ Broadcast Station. This also ensures that the maximum amount of network bandwidth is available for media delivery (not network management), enabling the network to scale reliably on demand.

The Vivian™ client application continually monitors the available bandwidth, media buffer and upstream and downstream media delivery quality. If a deficiency is identified, the network node automatically responsitions itself to ensure continuity of the media delivery. There is no need for the broadcaster to evaluate Internet performance - the network manages itself and provides real-time audience connectivity statistics. Several levels of automatic network and media stream recovery are employed to maximize the quality of each audience member's experience, even if its own Internet connection is sub-par or erratic.

Due to our technology implementation each media stream starts very fast with the absolute minimum "buffering time".

Seeing is believing. Compare our streams delivered at 100Kbps and others running up to two or three times that amount of bandwidth.

If you are already streaming media you can use Vivian to broadcast your own stream in minutes.P>

To ensure that all Vivian broadcasters always have the latest features available, no-charge updates are available throughout the paid license/contract term.

Reducing costs while providing a high quality of service is important to everyone. Vivian™ solutions are your answer to the best available Return-on-Investment (ROI).  Using Vivian™ broadcasting solutions is not only fast and easy, it is also incredibly inexpensive. Vivian promotional offerings and pricing is very clear, concise and uncomplicated.

There are basic requirements that must be met for streaming media - with many solutions for each. Viametrix provides a highly integrated feature set to meet many of these requirements.  The chart below can be used to provide a basic methodology to compare Vivian™ Broadcast Solutions to others. It won't take long to see the phenomenal economics of our solutions.

Vivian™ Broadcast Stations can be implemented literally in minutes by non-technical personnel. See our current promotions and configuration options here.

Note: Entities that currently stream may actually be able to take existing equipment out of service/redeploy when switching to Vivian broadcasting solutions. This is particularly true of those who utilize multiple PCs for encoding purposes.

Before audio or video can be broadcast, it must be encoded. Currently, Vivian™ broadcast offerings support the free encoder available for download from the Microsoft web site here.

Once audio or video has been encoded it may be stored and broadcast one or more times. You may also choose to encode and broadcast live and save the encoding for later re-broadcast.

Please be sure to pay special attention to the hardware requirements from the Microsoft web site here for Windows Media Series 9 encoder. Encoding is a CPU, RAM and disk-access intensive process. Skimping on the encoding process will directly (negatively) impact the quality of your broadcast.

Viametrix' broadcast solutions controlled by Playmagix allow broadcasters to deliver interactive text, graphics, etc. files along with their streaming media to a global audience. This functionality is most popular with enterprise and distance learning streaming requirements. However, there are many more uses of multimedia presentations that are not being fully exploited due to the cost and implementation difficulty of non-Vivian solutions.

Rather than just delivering audio / video and streaming ads, Vivian broadcasters can easily implement additional information/audience interactivity using the integrated, browser-based Playmagix, e.g.:

• For each audio/video stream as it is played
  • Support interactive shopping, e.g., coordinated E-Commerce links to purchase the song/CD/video subject
  • Coordinate the presentation of anything that can be delivered in a browser using standard HTML including:
    • HTML links to obtain interactive feedback from individual audience members
    • Text/graphic ads accompanying streaming media
    • Text-based closed captioning 
    • Spreadsheet presentations
    • Adobe PDF files
• Play individual audio/video streams
  • In a specific order
  • For a specified amount of time
  • In order or randomly selected from broadcaster-specified groups of streams
• Change multimedia content to be delivered without re-encoding audio/video 
• Display a schedule of content that will be broadcast at specified times

Using the ability to deliver specific web pages to your audience at specific times, you can easily create the ability to ensure that your audience members are not only watching your broadcast as it happens by having them personally respond to web pages delivered with the media stream.  This is an incredibly easy and efficient way to gain implement audience member accountability - something that other multicast systems simply cannot do.

Live Audio/Video

Video cameras and microphones and related media production equipment is required to create any live streaming media.

Pre-Recorded/Encoded Audio/Video

Audio/video which has been previously stored in a file can be encoded for broadcasting also. The ultimate broadcast quality is highly dependent upon the best possible original media capture and encoding process.

Even the most robust networks strain under the delivery requirements of normal non-audio/video network traffic when combined with heavy use of quality Video on Demand (VOD) (100Kbps and above) streams. Under the VOD distribution model, the same amount of bandwidth is required to deliver the media for each person/PC requesting a file/stream on the network. Multicasting is of no help. Even local/edge caching is of limited benefit because the full amount of bandwidth is still required to transfer the file from one PC to its "network/grid neighbor".

Vivian broadcast solutions provide the most efficient multimedia delivery model available for communicating the same information to a large audience at one time or on a scheduled basis. This is due to the software-based multicasting capability built in to every Vivian solution.

The following table shows an estimate of the maximum number of concurrent users (based on theoretical bandwidth limits) of several network types for the delivery of VOD at varying encoding rates - assuming the entire network was available only for VOD use - not a very likely situation.  As a result, actual available network bandwidth will be even less than that shown below.

	Selected Media Delivery Bandwidth Speeds
LAN/WAN Bandwidth	1000Kbps	500Kbps	300Kbps	100Kbps
10 Base T Ethernet	7	16	25	75
100 Base T Ethernet	71	150	239	717
GB Ethernet	717	1550	2390	717
T1 (1.5Mbps Internet)	1	2	4	12
Using the Vivian broadcast solution (based on licensed configuration), the same audio/video stream delivered by a VOD or edge caching solution above could be broadcast 24 hours per day to thousands of audience members and require only a single copy/use of the encoded bandwidth over the LAN/WAN at any time during the 24 hour broadcast time period. This is a phenomenal savings in bandwidth and delivery costs over any VOD solution.