Chronology
January 6, 1999 Radius Incorporated, the Cinepak company, renames itself Digital Origin Incorporated. May 4, 1998 Microsoft's first public test version of Microsoft NetShow 3.0 streaming video and video server product. February 26, 1998 Date of Advanced Streaming Format (ASF) Specification Public Specification Version 1.0 co-authored by Microsoft Corporation and RealNetworks, Inc. ASF is supposed to replace the AVI format. November 12, 1997 Microsoft releases a new NetShow distribution: NetShow 2.1 NetShow 2.1 adds support for RealNetworks (formerly Progressive Networks) RealVideo and RealAudio, NetShow clients for Windows 3.1, MacOS, and the Linux, Solaris, SunOS, and HP-UX versions of Unix, and TheaterServer for streaming broadcast-quality video over highbandwidth networks such as ATM and fast Ethernet. September 10, 1997 Microsoft releases second draft of ASF (Advanced Streaming Format) Specification. ASF is intended to replace the AVI format. August 14, 1997 Microsoft releases first draft of the ASF (Advanced Streaming Format) Specification. ASF is intended to replace the AVI format. August 5, 1997 Microsoft pays $75 million to acquire VxTreme of Sunnyvale, California. VxTreme markets a video codec that is probably wavelet-based. July 21, 1997 Microsoft invests $30 million in RealNetworks (formerly Progressive Networks) of Seattle. Microsoft also pays an additional $30 million to license RealNetworks audio and video technologies. RealNetworks technologies are RealAudio and RealVideo. RealVideo is actually the fractal video compression technology formerly known as ClearVideo, licensed from Iterated Systems. October 6, 1996 Microsoft invests $5 million for 10% of VDONet of Palo Alto, CA. VDONet markets the VDOWave wavelet-based video codec. Return to Top
© 2000 by John F. McGowan, Ph.D.