Gone are the days of carrying a boom-box on your shoulder, while playing your favourite radio station to anyone within earshot. Based on the successful implementation of Microsoft technology, M-Web Radio now lets mouses click and roll to the sounds of four entertaining DJs, or automated music, 24 hours a day.
With 16 275 registered users signed up since February 2000, M-Web Radio content is encoded and then streamed from the central Microsoft Media Server to its regional content servers in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. Other services offered on the site include personalisation of music, a studio Web cam, e-requests for songs and bulletin boards. As the fourth most popular hub on the M-Web site and serving approximately 1 000 users per hour at peak times, providing high quality, seamless streaming content to users is a high priority for M-Web Radio to keep them clicking back.
To achieve this, subscribers dial up to the distributed M-Web POP servers in their region, which decreases the network traffic, while improving access times for users. The seamless stream of audio content is recorded and encoded at the studio, encrypted over the network and then delivered to the subscriber`s PC via Microsoft Media Player, which is available for download from the M-Web Radio home page.
"By using Microsoft Media Player for content conversion and Internet Explorer as the browser, it is easy for people to freely get hold of the appropriate software to listen to our music, while we reach more subscribers," says Antonie Roux, CEO of M-Web. "The Microsoft streaming solution is the best on the market and we have put it through its paces before during outside broadcasts such as Oppikoppie, the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival and the 1999 Comrades Marathon."
"Digital radio has come of age with M-Web`s streaming of high-quality audio over the Internet," says Fraser Mocke, IT strategy consultant at Microsoft South Africa. "The Web is moving towards a payment model for high value content and service and M-Web has taken an innovative step towards giving cyber listeners the audio they want to hear."
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Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft is the worldwide leader in software for personal computers. The company offers a wide range of products and services for business and personal use, each designed with the mission of making it easier and more enjoyable for people to take advantage of the full power of personal computing every day. Microsoft South Africa was launched in January 1993 in Johannesburg and now has sales offices in Durban and Cape Town.
If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft South Africa, please visit the Microsoft Web page at www.microsoft.com, the Microsoft South Africa home page at http://www.microsoft.com/southafrica/ or the IT Web Website at http://www.itweb.co.za, South Africa`s only daily online source of information and technology news.