UFC 104: Bringing Pay-Per-View to Online Users with Silverlight, Smooth Streaming, and PlayReady

Back in August we told you about how UFC.com used IIS Smooth Streaming for the UFC 102 pre-fight weigh-ins. Building on the success of that, we’re excited to announce that this Saturday, October 24^th, UFC 104 will use Silverlight and IIS Smooth Streaming not only for the weigh-ins, but also for the actual fights. Even more exciting is that Silverlight can now enable pay-per-view of live Smooth Streaming events with PlayReady DRM. This is a major advancement that will enable content owners to safely and securely offer and monetize premium content. This will ultimately make more premium content available to online viewers, and with Silverlight and Smooth Streaming it will look awesome!

For the UFC 102 weigh-ins, the Smooth Streaming content looked great even though the maximum stream bitrate was 1.5Mbps. For UFC 104 we’re pumping it up to 4Mbps for a true HD experience. Once again Origin Digital will be doing the encoding using Inlet Spinnaker encoders, so the video quality will be unsurpassed. Once it’s encoded Akamai will be delivering it on the Akamai HD Network, so viewers can expect the best viewing experience possible. As with UFC 102, CSG Systems has partnered with UFC to bring the event to online viewers using their Content Direct product to protect and monetize the content.

You can check out the pre-fight weigh-ins at www.ufc.com/live 4 PM PDT/7 PM EDT on Friday, October 23^rd and the pay-per-view UFC 104 fights on Saturday, October 24^th at 7 PM PDT/10 PM EDT from the Staples Center in Los Angeles.