by Tony Huynh, Product Management, End-User Computing
Today, VMware is excited to announce that VMware® Horizon View™ 5.2 Feature Pack 2 is generally available. With this latest feature pack, customers have access to a comprehensive set of new features that enable new rich-media use cases. The two new features being introduced in Feature Pack 2 are “Real-Time Audio-Video” and “Flash URL Redirection” for live webcast video.
Real-Time Audio-Video
The “Real-Time Audio-Video” feature is a complementary technology to previously released Unified Communications (UC) solutions from Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft and Mitel. “Real-Time Audio-Video” enables Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) users to have broader application support for real-time audio and video when using devices such as microphones and webcams on their local clients. Moreover, the new feature provides significant performance improvements and improved HID compatibility. By encoding audio and video using industry standard codecs, the upstream bandwidth for a single webcam session can be reduced by up to 100x versus using general USB redirection for webcams.
We have tested this new capability successfully with applications such as Skype, Cisco Webex and Google Talk. Other applications may work also, but would need to be tested on a case-by-case basis. Along with supporting video with webcam applications, the “Real-Time Audio-Video” feature allows customers to make bi-directional audio calls using USB headsets and analog-in inputs on their client machines.
Flash URL Redirection
“Flash URL Redirection” for live webcast video allows a customer to stream webcast video commonly used during a CEO broadcast to their virtual desktops. With this new feature, a live webcast can be delivered to thousands of VDI client endpoints without negatively affecting the datacenter server and network.
When a VDI user clicks on a URL link for a live webcast from inside a company webpage, the URL is redirected to the client endpoint. From the client endpoint, a local flash player opens up and contacts the Adobe Media Server directly to request the live webcast video. The live webcast is then delivered using standard networking protocols directly to the client endpoint. This feature will be supported for users connecting to their virtual desktops from both Windows and Linux thin clients.
Download the new VMware Horizon View Feature Pack and Horizon View Clients today
Customers that wish to use these new features will need to download the Horizon View 5.2 Feature Pack 2 software and the Horizon View 2.1 client software
Tell us what you think of the new Feature Pack 2 and Horizon View Clients today on Twitter and Facebook.
