Hi, I am Alvin Lau, a Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) from the Remote Desktop Virtualization team. Today I want to talk about how Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 enable a seamless multimedia experience for all content types on all networks.
Previously, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 introduced Windows Multimedia Redirection , which provided a great experience when playing multimedia content by using Windows Media Player (WMP) in a remote session. Since Multimedia Redirection was based on redirecting the native media stream to the client, the experience was great for supported video formats on LAN networks. However, there were a few key shortcomings:
To address these shortcomings, Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 introduced RemoteFX Media Streaming, which uses host-side rendering techniques (which provide broad video format support) in combination with the industry standard H.264 codec (which benefits online media streaming) to seamlessly redirect video content.
RemoteFX Media Streaming works in 3 simple steps
This is a simplification of all the complexities in the system–but should give you an idea of how it works.
Benefits of RemoteFX Media Streaming
In summary, RemoteFX Media Streaming delivers a smooth playback experience for all video content even on WAN networks.
Take a look at the following video which shows Windows 7 and Windows 8 remote desktops side by side. In both cases the client computer is connected to the remote desktops by using a WAN link with 2 Mbps bandwidth, 250ms round-trip latency, and 0.5% random loss.
Does Windows Server 2012 still support Multimedia Redirection?
Windows Media Redirection still provides the best experience on LAN networks for supported video formats. Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 automatically detect these conditions and turn on Multimedia Redirection. If these conditions are not met (for example, if the user is on a WAN network), the system automatically switches to use RemoteFX Media Streaming, even for WMP content. The determination of whether or not the user is on a WAN network is made by looking at the end-to-end latency—if the connection latency is above 30ms, Multimedia Redirection will not be used.
Configuration requirements
RemoteFX Media Streaming is enabled along with the rest of Remote Desktop Services, and no additional configuration is required. This is in line with our core philosophy for RemoteFX in Windows Server 2012, which is to make things simple and have features just work out of the box. However, if a user is connecting to a virtual desktop that has a RemoteFX virtual graphics processing unit (vGPU) installed, the host Hyper-V server must have a non-server core setup due to the fact that media codecs are not available in a server core setup.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you find this post useful. I am looking forward to your feedback.
If you have specific troubleshooting questions, go to the RDS web forum at http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserverTS/threads ; many of my fellow product group members and community experts watch and respond to questions on the web forum on a regular basis.
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