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Shuttle Launch Sets Streaming Record

By Nate Mook, BetaNews

July 28, 2005, 10:36 AM

Nearly 433,000 people tuned in to watch the Space Shuttle Discovery roar into space Tuesday morning, in an event that smashed a streaming video record set by AOL earlier this month. 335,000 people simultaneously watched via Yahoo in Windows Media, while Akamai served up the other streams in Real Video format.

AOL jumped into the record books on July 2 when Live 8 concerts were streamed to over 175,000 people simultaneously. The shuttle launch more than doubled those numbers, and quadrupled NASA's prior record of 118,000 streams for the Deep Impact mission.

One key factor in the number of video streams was the timing of Discovery's launch: 10:38am ET on Tuesday. Many Americans were at work and the Web was their only outlet to catch the historical moment. The U.S. Space Shuttle had been grounded for over two years following the Columbia disaster.

The launch of Discovery was also a much shorter event than Live 8, which lasted for almost 11 hours in London. Nonetheless, Yahoo is pleased with the turn out.

"This makes the launch one the largest simultaneous video streams in Internet history (possibly the largest)," a Yahoo spokesperson told BetaNews. "By offering the live stream via Yahoo!, NASA tripled the online audience it has garnered for past events."

Yahoo will also be offering live video feed of the entire 12-day Discovery mission through a partnership with NASA TV.

Add a Comment (3 Comments)

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By funcheung

posted Jul 28, 2005 - 4:50 PM

wmv sucks... real is superior in terms of streaming!

Score: 0

By louiecerv8

posted Jul 28, 2005 - 2:39 PM

I am so glad to have taken part in this historic moment by being one of those who watched the lauch even if it was late evening here in the Philippines at that time.

Score: 0

By Sorb

posted Jul 28, 2005 - 12:09 PM

I had been waiting for two weeks to see the shuttle launch and when finally the hour had come it was impossible to connect to the Real Video stream and I couldn´t even load the NASA webpage to get the link to the WMV stream. Imagine my frustration when I missed this event! Since I can´t use foul language here I can´t even begin to describe my reaction. NASA can presumably put a man on the moon but to set up a couple of mirror servers to broadcast a shuttle launch obviously is beyond their capacity :(

Score: 0

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