Today s scalable video-server designs allow single copies of content to be shared across all streams supported by the video server. This is achieved by striping content across all the server s disk drives. Combined with a scalable internal interconnect, this enables the server to deliver whatever stripe of video is needed for each video pump s output, while automatically balancing each stream s input and output load across the entire server. For the same number of disk drives, as compared with distributed architectures that need many disks to duplicate content, much larger online content libraries can be supported. Video rental stores buy rates increase with the number of titles on hand.
More products translate into more revenue.
But they also create the need for more shelf space. The ability to support large, centralized libraries of content can provide significant business advantages that would not be feasible if the content had to be duplicated on multiple distributed video servers. All video streamed to the network originates from the disk drive. As a server grows to support more simultaneous streams, the number of disk drives needed to support the delivered bandwidth must expand as well independent of the number of online titles. That, in turn, provides plenty of online content storage for advanced VOD applications and the growing customer base.