Jun 20, 2001 : Tomb Raider Web Site Handles the Hits

📅 June 20, 2001 - In addition to an outstanding showing at the box office, Angelina Jolie's performance as video game heroine Lara Croft in the movie Tomb Raider, which opened this weekend, was a big hit online, and a big success for Microsoft Windows Media, according to Keynote Systems (keynote.com).
The self-proclaimed ?Internet performance authority? announced its findings on Wednesday regarding the performance of the Windows Media streaming services on the movie's official Web site (tombraidermovie.com).
Keynote made its measurements using its new Streaming Perspective 2.0 service, which the company announced today at the Streaming Media West conference. The service adds performance measurements for Microsoft Windows Media audio and video streams. The company says that now, with support for the two leading streaming media players, Microsoft Windows Media and Real Networks? Real Media, it can measure the quality and performance of the majority of the streaming content on the Web.
Streaming Perspective 2.0 now delivers performance results for one-time events, as well as ongoing and on-demand services through its MyKeynote interface.
According to Keynote's measurements, Windows Media delivered content with high quality and availability to users accessing its streams through high bandwidth T1, midrange bandwidth and low bandwidth dial-up connections.
The company measured the availability and popularity of media clips offered by the movie site, including the ?behind the scenes? video, the ?red carpet? coverage of the premier and the ?teaser trailer? and ?theatrical trailer,? starting Friday, June 15, the day of the premier.
Measured from June 15 to June 17, the day of the premier and the two days following, all the streamed clips performed at an average of more than 98% availability for the whole weekend at every bandwidth level, except the most popular "red carpet" footage, which still performed at about 90% availability on Friday and improved to about 95% by Sunday.
``Since introducing our Streaming Perspective service at the end of last year, we have seen the overall quality of streaming content improve,'' said Matt Parks, director of product management at Keynote. Parks says the improvement of content is due to rapid development in the technology, including new media players from the major vendors, and improvements in the hosting providers and content delivery networks.