RAI.IT’s Italian Team: Microsoft, Inlet, Level 3

Radio Televisione Italiana’s RAI.IT Internet division teamed up with Microsoft, Inlet Technologies, and Level 3 Communications to provide live Web broadcasts in HDTV quality of Italian soccer team matches during the FIFA Confederations Cup South Africa 2009.

RAI.IT is using Microsoft Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS7) Live Smooth Streaming and Microsoft Silverlight technologies to stream HD-quality video from the tournament, which started June 14 and runs through June 28.

Video streams are cached in existing servers on Level 3’s global content-delivery Network to allow “a massive diffusion of the service on the Internet,” RAI.IT said, adding that all the traffic is monitored from the Level 3 broadcast-operations center.

Inlet’s Spinnaker 7000 live-streaming appliances are being used to encode the Confederations Cup simulcasts.

For more information, please visit www.inlethd.com and www.Level3.com.