Developers Preview Media Web Site Tools

Microsoft announced a “developer preview” of Digital Broadcast Manager (DBM). DBM is a toolkit for building commercial Web sites that distribute digital audio and video in Microsoft’s Windows Media Format. DBM is part of Microsoft’s ongoing campaign to sell Windows NT and Windows 2000 to entertainment Web sites and commercial service providers such as cable operators. It’s also an attempt to create a product out of tools that it originally developed to serve particular customers, specifically, House of Blues and e-Media.

DBM comes with a sample “video store” Web site built with Active Server Pages. It includes an Administrator tool for customizing the sample Web site, adding and removing audio and video content, and generating reports on site usage. The sample site supports authentication, content delivery, and payment for a variety of transaction types, including “pay-per-stream” (user pays to receive a streamed song or video) and “registered download” (user pays to download a copy-protected song or video). DBM requires Site Server, Windows Media Server, and SQL Server.