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Microsoft has promoted Smooth Streaming as the streaming technology of choice when delivering video streams to the Windows Phone 7 (WP7).  The problem with Smooth Streaming is that it can't be played natively and a Silverlight Application is required to play the streams (both on the phone and PC).  Of course the Windows Phone 7 supports Silverlight Applications and Smooth Streaming, but what happens if you don't want to develop and install an app through the Marketplace?

There is an alternative to deliver live streams to the Windows Phone 7 using only the IE browser without installing any apps on the phone...
Windows Phone 7 comes installed with the Windows Media Player application which can be used to play WMV and other files on the phone.  Windows Media Player on Windows Phone 7 can also be used to play live WMV video streams so long as you carefully craft the URL to launch the Media Player.  Here's how to do it:

• Use MComms Transcode software to take any input and encode the output for WMV9 push stream over http to the Windows Media Server
• Installed Windows Media Server on Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2003
• Create a live publishing point on the Windows Media Server with a name of "livestream.wmv" (note that the .wmv in the name is the critical thing to work on WP7)
• Type the public URL of the publishing point into the IE browser on the WP7, for example http://www.yourserver.com.au/livestream.wmv.  Be sure to use the http:// URL, as mms and rtsp don't work.  You can also add the URL to a HTML page as normal.
• The Windows Phone 7's IE browser looks at the .wmv extension on the URL and thinks it is a WMV file so it opens the URL in the Windows Media Player which plays the live http stream nicely.

We tested this on a LG Optimus LG-C900k running Windows Phone 7.0.7008 but we have also had feedback that it works on almost all Windows Phone 7 devices.

For more information on MComms Transcode, click here.

To contact us or request a trial software version click here.