On the 28th of January, we’ll be rolling out a huge update to the Stream Alerts monitoring system that completely replaces our back-end monitoring system. With the new setup comes new features such as detailed test reports, the ability to monitor DRM protected streams and (finally) Flash payload monitoring. Contact us for a demo account to check out the great changes!

Our new monitoring system uses open-source software such as the popular VLC Media Player and FFMpeg media library. With huge supporting communities, these projects are constantly updated to play the latest streaming formats so we can monitor almost any stream you throw at us. We can also offer much more detail regarding the stream tests themselves and as a result, all Availability tests will be accessible individually so that you can see what the player was doing when a test was performed. And if you have special requirements for your stream, we can modify the monitoring system easily to accommodate.

Flash Payload monitoring is out of beta and into production! 24/7 confidence monitoring of your audio and video feeds is now possible, ONLY with Stream Alerts! Flash is still the most popular streaming format available and if you’re broadcasting live feeds, you need to know that viewers are seeing your content.

Some clients need to protect their streams with Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems and we are starting to address that need by authenticating before testing. Some of the DRM methods that are currently working include:

• Velocix Tokens - Input your stream ID, secret password and serial and we can grab the one-use only token from Velocix’s servers for your Flash or Windows Media stream
• Highwinds SMIL - For Highwinds customers, we can grab the one-time use URL form a Highwinds SMIL playlist before every test
• Icecast User Authentication - By formatting the URL for DRM protected Icecast streams, we can monitor with ease

If you have a different kind of DRM protection, please contact us and we’ll get to work on it for you.