Delivers an Online Experience that Matches HDTV
Attempting to deliver high bitrate HD files can create long buffering delays, slow start-up times, and frequent interruptions. Because the Akamai HD Network chooses the optimal bitrate for delivery – it is faster and more consistent than any other network. With fully integrated DVR capabilities for live video across Flash, Silverlight, and the iPhone, the Akamai HD Network enables a personalized and interactive experience that matches HDTV.

Supports Broadcast Scale Audiences
Akamai HD Network is uniquely able to scale for successful delivery of HD video to broadcast audiences. HD quality video streams to users worldwide. By delivering video from HTTP servers located closest to end users, Akamai HD Network minimizes packet loss and maximizes streaming throughput to end users all around the world.

Provides Insight into Content Usage and Audience Engagement
Akamai's HD Media Analytics includes real-time and historic traffic reports, as well as premium analytics that give granular intelligence on content usage, audience engagement, and client side quality-of-service metrics.

Powered by the world's largest delivery network, Akamai HD Network is uniquely able to scale for successful delivery of HD video to broadcast audiences and to users worldwide.

The Challenges of HD Delivery

While online video presents vast opportunities, it also comes with its share of challenges.

When implemented poorly, online video frustrates end users with long start-up times, poor picture quality, and frequent interruptions for buffering. And the ramifications are huge. According to Jupiter Research, 60% of regular online video users are less likely to return to a site for video content if the viewing experience is poor.

Why is it so difficult to deliver an optimal end-user experience? Simply put, it's challenging to reliably deliver high-throughput data streams across the Web – especially to large audiences.

The fundamental challenges of online video delivery lie within the Internet itself. Given that the Internet is made up of over 13,000 competing networks, it works surprisingly well. But its many bottlenecks and capacity limitations are unpredictable and difficult to manage - lying outside the control of any single entity or group. While these problems affect the delivery of all types of Internet content, they are particularly challenging for video, which requires the transfer of large data volumes at very high rates.