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Keynote Tuesday announced the first results of the Keynote Streaming Index, a quantifiable industry benchmark for streaming media quality and vendor excellence. Keynote also introduced the Keynote Scale for Streaming, and availability of the Keynote Streaming Perspective service, that measures Internet streaming performance. Keynote Streaming Perspective, the Index and Scale, introduce the ability to measure and define the quality of streaming audio and video on the Internet.

In the first two weeks of results for the Keynote Streaming Index, MTV and C-SPAN shared the lead in the Cable TV category, with barnesandnoble.com, CNBC, and WUSL-FM Philadelphia leading in their respective categories. The overall average score for stream quality on the Index for the week of October 8-14, 2000 is 1.87 on a scale of zero to ten, and 1.19 for the week of October 15-22; availability averaged 78.9 percent for online users accessing the content the first week, and 78.2 percent the second week.

The Keynote Streaming Perspective service, Scale and Index provide streaming sites with an independent benchmark to assure that users see and hear the intended quality of their streams and improve the streaming performance of their Web sites. Web site operators can measure the performance of both on-demand and live content as experienced by users in various locations using the Keynote Streaming Perspective service, compare their results against the benchmark provided by the Index and Scale, diagnose performance problems at the server or in the Internet infrastructure, and implement design and performance solutions based on identified problems.

Keynote's scale and Streaming Perspective service are supported by a group of streaming industry leaders. Initial members of the Keynote Streaming Partner Program include Adero, Akamai, Digital Island, Enron, iBeam, Intel, Microsoft, The MTVi Group, and RealNetworks.

The Keynote Streaming 20 Index October 8-14 and 15-22, 2000

	Stream Quality		Rendering Score		Availability
Week Of:	10/8	10/15	10/8	10/15	10/8	10/15
Overall Index Average	1.87	1.19	86.0%	54.9%	78.9%	78.2%
Best Sites:
Audio E-commerce:
barnesandnoble.com	1.89	1.33	99.0%	69.3%	65.3%	69.1%
Broadcast Radio:
WUSL-FM 99 Philadelphia	2.09	1.45	99.0%	69.2%	88.7%	79.6%
Financial Audio
CNBC	1.86	1.30	97.0%	68.3%	85.3%	96.3%
Cable Television
MTV	3.46		79.0%		83.1%
C-SPAN		2.21		62.5%		83.9%

Results are based on measurements taken by Keynote's Streaming Perspective service once an hour, 5:00am to 9:00pm Pacific Time from 10 major cities in the U.S. Stream Quality is based on the rankings of the Keynote Scale( for Streaming, on a scale from one to ten, with '10.0' representing DVD quality.

"With the current state of Internet technology, the highest possible score on the Streaming Index at this point in time is about a 6.0. This is for ideal delivery of a 300kbps video stream with a frame rate of 20fps," explained Matt Parks, product manager for Keynote's Streaming Perspective service. "A "10" on the Index is near-DVD quality, which, although not possible to stream on the Web right now, is what the public sees on TV and the standard by which video is judged. We expect the ratings on the Streaming Index to improve, just as they have on Keynote's other industry indexes, with improvements in technology and Web operations."

Sites on the Keynote Streaming 20 Index are ranked on a scale from one to ten according to their stream quality scores on the Keynote Streaming Scale, which take into account startup, audio, and video quality. Whereas 'Stream Quality' reflects the end user quality of experience, 'Rendering Score' is a weighted rating that measures how well the agent played the stream as it was intended. Initially, the sites reported are using Real Media technology from Real Networks; Windows Media sites will be added to the Index in the future.

The 20 sites on the Keynote Streaming 20 Index are:

Audio e-commerce:

• Amazon
• barnesandnoble.com
• CDNow
• Tower Records
• Sam Goody

Financial Audio:

• Bloomberg Radio
• CBS MarketWatch
• Motley Fool Radio
• CNBC Dow Jones Business Radio
• ON24

Broadcast Radio:

• WPLJ-FM 95.5 New York
• KYSR-FM 98.7 Los Angeles
• WGN-AM 720 Chicago
• KGO-AM 810 San Francisco
• WUSL-FM 99 Philadelphia

Cable TV:

• Weather.com
• C-Span
• MTV
• History Channel
• CNN

The Keynote Scale for Streaming Scale is based on a database of thousands of audio and video files combining the quality factors affecting streaming in different variations and degrees, the rankings of which have been substantiated by panels of Web video experts. The Scale reflects streaming quality as viewed by end users, based on such factors as lost packets, rebuffering, how many times the stream stopped and started during playback, bandwidth delivered, bandwidth received, etc.

The Scale is composed of Audio Score, Video Score and Startup Score. The Scale provides an overall ranking taking these three factors into account, and provides separate scores for these as well as for rendering and delivery quality.

Subscribers to Keynote's Streaming Perspective service are able to download sample clips representing various scores on the Keynote Scale to assess the quality of their streams and determine where their streaming content ranks on the Scale. Subscribers can also view low level network information that contributes to the Scale, such as bandwidth usage and packet statistics.

Keynote Streaming Perspective measures the pertinent factors affecting streaming quality, including: startup quality, audio quality, video quality, and rendering/delivery quality. Specifically, this includes such elements as connect time, redirect time, initial buffer time, video frame rate, recovered, lost and dropped packets and bandwidth utilization. Data is collected at Keynote's operations center and instantly available to the subscriber through any Web browser, and requires no installation, configuration or update maintenance.

Keynote's streaming measurements indicate performance anomalies by location and help to pinpoint their causes, whether due to bandwidth limitations, backbone differences or traffic overload.

Pricing for the Keynote Streaming Perspective service ranges from $395 to $9995 per clip per month depending on measurement interval and size of the stream. Data and sample clips from the Keynote Scale for Streaming are available to subscribers, as are the results of the Keynote Streaming Index, the results of which are also available to the public.

For further information about Keynote, visit the Keynote Web site at http://www.keynote.com