The Envelope Please: The 2009 Streaming Media Readers' Choice Award Winners
This third-annual Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards was the most popular ever—more than 5,000 votes were cast for more than 200 products, companies, and services. That meant that we had to be even more careful in our examination and confirmation of the votes to avoid any ballot-box stuffing (it's bad enough that we actually received votes from "James Bond;" what's worse is that he actually voted 15 times in multiple categories), the winners were revealed.
We first published the brief category descriptions when we opened nominations, but two of the categories warrant further explanation. Since this was the first year we included "Best Online Video Startup" categories—one for content, one for technology—we were fairly liberal in our definition of a "startup;" several of the finalists have been around since before the beginning of 2009, but they're all relative newcomers, and each one warrants recognition for the recent advances they've made. Come 2010, we'll limit those categories to companies who actually made their first appearance in the previous 12 months.
We announced the winners during Streaming Media West and the Online Video Platform Summit, at our Readers' Choice Awards reception sponsored by Kaltura, Digital Rapids, and ViewCast.
And here they are—the 2009 Streaming Media Readers' Choice Award Winners, along with the other finalists and the percentage each received of the total votes cast for all nominees in each category. All the winners are posted beneath the video of last night's awards ceremony.
Best Online Video Startup Company – Content
Winner:
EffinFunny, The Legend of Neil (33%)
Finalists:
Purchase Brothers, Escape from City 17 (16%)
Invodo, Invodo Product Video Library (14%)
Best Online Video Startup Company – Technology
Winner:
Livestream (43%)
Finalists:
Encoding.com (22%)
BoinxTV (13%)
Best Streaming Innovation
Winner:
Wowza Media Server 2 Advanced (24%)
Finalists:
Adobe Systems, Dynamic Streaming (17%)
Microsoft Smooth Streaming (12%)
Encoding Software (over $1000)
Winner:
Rhozet, Carbon Coder (28%)
Finalists:
Inlet Technologies, Fathom (16%)
Telestream FlipFactory (14%)
Encoding Software (under $1000)
Winner:
Sorenson Squeeze (27%)
Finalists:
Adobe Media Encoder CS4 (15%)
Microsoft Expression Encoder (12%)
Enterprise Video Platform
Winner:
Accordent Technologies Rich Media Communications Suite (35%)
Finalists:
Kontiki Delivery Management System (23%)
VBrick EtherneTV (19%)
Global CDN
Winner:
Akamai (16%)
Finalists:
Highwinds (14%)
Limelight (14%)
Level 3 (11%)
Hardware Encoder (HD)
Winner:
Digital Rapids StreamZ HD (29%)
Finalists:
ViewCast Niagara 7500 (18%)
Telestream Pipeline HD Dual (17%)
Hardware Encoder (SD)
Winner:
ViewCast Niagara Pro II (27%)
Finalists:
Digital Rapids StreamZ/DRC-Stream (23%)
VBrick H.264 Appliance (21%)
Live Video Streaming Platform
Winner:
Livestream (49%)
Finalists:
Ustream (13%)
Justin.tv (10%)
Online Video Platform (free)
Winner:
YouTube (60%)
Finalists:
Vimeo (15%)
Blip.tv (9%)
Online Video Platform (Premium)
Winner:
Brightcove (31%)
Finalists:
Sorenson 360 (16%)
Kaltura (14%)
Portable Live Encoding Appliance
Winner:
NewTek TriCaster (34%)
Finalists:
ViewCast GoStream SURF (21%)
Digital Rapids TouchStream (19%)
Regional (North American) Delivery Network
Winner:
Streaming Media Hosting (56%)
Finalists:
PowerStream (13%)
StreamGuys (9%)
Reporting and Analytics SolutionWinner:
Skytide Insight for Flash Video Players (24%)
Finalists:
Omniture Site Catalyst (18%)
Accordent Technologies Media Management System (16%)
Search and Indexing Platform
Winner:
RAMP (formerly EveryZing) MediaCloud (37%)
Finalists:
DigitalSmiths (19%)
GoTuit VideoMarker Pro (17%)
Server Hardware/Software
Winner:
Wowza Media Server Pro (43%)
Finalists:
Adobe Flash Media Server 3.5 (22%)
Microsoft IIS7 Media Services 3.0 (12%)
Streaming Music Solution
Winner:
Live365 (46%)
Finalists:
Pandora (30%)
Last.fm (14%)
Transcoding SaaS
Winner:
Multicast Media Technologies Multicast Transcoding (19%)
Finalists:
Encoding.com (15%)
mPOINT (12%)
Video Advertising Management Platform
Winner:
Eyeblaster, Inc. (23%)
Finalists:
YuMe ACE (19%)
Tremor Media Acudeo (17%)
Video Advertising Network
Winner:
Tremor Media (29%)
Finalists:
YuMe (14%)
Broadband Enterprises Video Network (8%)
Webcasting/Presentations Solutions
Winner:
Sonic Foundry Mediasite 5.1 (36%)
Finalists:
Accordent Technologies Capture Station (18%)
ON24 Webcast Center (11%)
Thanks to the sponsors of this year's Streaming Media Readers' Choice Awards: Kaltura, Digital Rapids, and ViewCast
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