LONDON, Sept. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Today at IBC 2007, Limelight Networks
(Nasdaq: LLNW), a leading content delivery network (CDN) for digital media,
announced that it has been selected by ITV to stream live broadcasting and new
on-demand television programming for the broadcaster's ITV.com online portal.
In addition to offering a continual stream of ITV's four broadcast
channels, ITV.com now offers "catch-up" programming on-demand, allowing ITV
viewers across the UK to watch their favourite programmes via the Internet,
for free, up to 30 days after they are first aired. On-demand programming
includes this year's Rugby World Cup. For the first time, fans that miss a
live broadcast will be able to watch the match in its entirety online, at any
time.
"The sheer volume of original content that ITV is making available online
is unprecedented in UK broadcasting, and it's already extremely popular with
viewers," said George Meek, vice president, Europe at Limelight Networks.
"Our advanced CDN service is optimised for mass delivery of digital media
files, ensuring visual quality, dependability and an excellent viewing
experience for ITV.com's growing audience."
Limelight Networks' innovative network architecture is a highly advanced
content-delivery network for digital media. The company provides a tailored,
reliable and massively scalable service that overcomes internet-related
performance and security issues, and maintains delivery speed levels as
website traffic, file size and content collections increase.
Limelight Networks worked with ITV.com to constrain the broadcaster's
online programming to only UK-based viewers. It also implemented digital
rights management (DRM) for the live streams, to assure licensing adherence
and to prevent unlawful reproduction of the content.
"Our viewers shouldn't have to notice the technology behind streaming
video at all -- it should simply work," said Steve White, head of technology
for ITV broadband. "That's why we chose to work with Limelight. They have
the infrastructure that can handle our high volumes today, and moving forward
as ITV.com's viewing audience expands in the coming years."
About ITV
ITV is the UK's largest commercial broadcaster, with its family of
channels watched by more than 80% of the population every week.
ITV has the most successful commercial family of channels in the UK. ITV1
is the UK's most popular channel in peak-time; ITV2 is the UK's biggest
non-terrestrial channel; ITV3 is the largest digital-only channel in Freeview
households; and ITV4 had the most successful digital channel launch to date.
ITV also owns CiTV, the leading commercial children's channel on Freeview, and
Men & Motors.
ITV.com launched in July 2007 as the most comprehensive commercial
television site in the UK, offering live streamed versions of ITV1, ITV2, ITV3
and ITV4, a 30-day on-demand catch-up service and an archive of the best ITV
content.
About Limelight Networks
Limelight Networks is a high-performance content delivery network for
digital media, providing massively scalable, global delivery solutions for
on-demand and live Internet distribution of video, music, games and social
media. Limelight Networks' infrastructure is optimized for the large object
sizes, large content libraries, and large audiences associated with compelling
rich media content. Limelight is the content delivery network of choice for
more than 850 of the world's top media companies, including Akimbo, Amazon
Unbox(TM), Belo Interactive, Brightcove, "BuyMusic" @ Buy.com, DreamWorks,
LLC, Facebook, FOXNews.com, IFILM, ITV Play, MSNBC.com, MySpace, NC
Interactive, Valve and Xbox Live. For more information, visit
http://www.llnw.com.
SOURCE Limelight Networks
Contact: UK, Kirsten Potter, +44-207-632-3839, kpotter@waggeneredstrom.com, or US, Kristen Leon, +1-415-547-7027, kristenl@waggeneredstrom.com, both of Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, for Limelight Networks