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Venerable heavyweights are joined by disruptive newcomers on this installment of the best products and services of the past year.
this is the fourth edition of the Streaming Media Editors' Picks, and it was harder than ever to settle on which of the multitude of new products-and improvements to familiar ones-merited a spot on the list. As usual, we polled all of our regular writers for their input, but unlike years past, there was nothing resembling a consensus on more than one of our eventual picks.
The funny thing was that that particular pick-Apple's iPhone-is only partially a streaming media device; nonetheless, it was the one product that almost everyone agreed just had to be on the list, even if it's as much for what it represents and portends for the future as it is for what it does now.
For the rest of our list, we had no hard and fast criteria, since "streaming media" is such a big tent these days. Rather, we tried to pick the best from a cross-section of entertainment and enterprise, deep technology and consumer gadget, and production and playback. So, without further ado (or equivocation), the 2007 Editors' Picks.
Accordent * www.accordent.com
Media Management System
Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? Accordent introduced its Media Management System in 2006, immediately boasting a roster of big-name customers like HP and JPMorganChase. In 2007 though, the system really came into its own, furthering the move toward enterprise video convergence in spring by announcing integration withTandberg, Polycom, and other videoconferencing systems, and then again in the fall by adding support for theTandberg Content Server and Flash presentations. Add to that more robust tracking and reporting capabilities, and you've got an enterprise powerhouse that just keeps getting better.
Adobe * www.adobe.com
Adobe Media Player
Back in April 2007 I got a last-minute, late Friday afternoon briefing from Adobe (hastily called, no doubt, when word spread that Microsoft was going to unleash Silverlight at NAB) about the company's new media player. It sounded so...