Attached Link: http://verdi.research.att.com

Hi, I work for AT&T labs, and I've just got hold of something I just have to share... http://verdi.research.att.com It's some kind of streaming media player, not sure if it'll work outside of our network, but in quality terms it's streets ahead of real, etc. I'm told it's a bandwidth hog, and the interface is basic, but even so... If you can't get to the page let me know.

I can't get to the page.

Yeah, it looks like you have to be behind the corporate firewall for it to work, I'd give it out, but A) it's proprietary software, and B) it needs access to a NAP (Network Access Point) which it will only find on this side of the fiewall too. Basically it's a form of MP3 streaming, but without QOS requirements, so I'm getting a 96kbps stream with no loss from Germany, and 112kbps from several NY stations, the encoding is called +AAC, the white paper say it needs at least ISDN to function properly, but if you've got a permanent connection (and they're probably thinking of using it via ADSL) then you can get streaming audio and video at a greatly improved quality than is available today and still surf. It says you need a Pentium with an FPU (100Mhz or more) to really be able to decompress on the fly without slowdown. You might want to ask your AT&T rep if you can get access, one server is apparently capable of serving 500 clients at 128kbps (unicast) and the base spec is a Pentium Pro with 64Mb of RAM running Linux (or some other UNIX with access to pthreads) so you could throw one up easily... I shall enquire of the types that wrote it and see what they say. later jb