You may have noticed that when we released our software, the source repository only came with a single "master" branch that didn't seem to have very much recent activity in it. This is because the master branch only contains releases that we have tested for bugs and at least two separate testers have signed off on - development happens internally in a separate branch per feature, which are then merged into a single "development" branch when they are completed.

Starting this past weekend, we now have the development branch of both the library and the software itself available to the public - which means access to the bleeding-edge unstable code and up-and-coming features! This allows you to get a sort of "preview" of the current state of semi-stable development and what the upcoming release will contain. To be specific the current code in the development branch contains support for MS Silverlight Smooth Streaming output, bugfixes for the RTMP ingest and live stream buffering code, plugs for several small memory leaks, support for storing the binaries outside of the $PATH and overall stability improvements.

On a related note, work is being done on fleshing out our build system, which will soon begin churning out automated 32 and 64 bits distro-agnostic builds of both the master and development branches. These builds are like the downloads we currently provide, in that they contain the libmist library inside the binaries to simplify installation. To maximize compatibility with as many linux installations as possible, a recent version of libcrypto is compiled in as well and these builds are even almost LSB 4.1 compliant. Keep a lookout for an official announcement when the automated build system is available to the general public (we are just testing it internally right now to make sure everything runs as smoothly as we want it to), most likely next week.

If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact us through our contact form or our Google Groups. We really appreciate your feedback.

Since we launched Mistserver open-source on the 30th of September it has been very well received by our visitors. The Mistserver.org website has seen a surge of new visitors coming from 77 different countrie, and staying an average of 5 minutes with many staying as long as 20 minutes! This has resulted in many downloads of our binary packages with Win32 taking the lead, followed by Ubuntu in second and the generic source package in 3rd.

Meanwhile our development department has been working very hard on further improving the servers capabilities. Currently we have MPEG-TS, HLS and Smooth Streaming going through their last round of testing and fixing. We will release whichever protocol clears testing first immediately open-source so make sure to check our Downloads page regularly for updates!

We are also working really hard on getting our first commercial product available for purchase. This too will be a close race between our Long Term Support Release and our Mistcenter subscriptions but we are aiming for a 2012 launch on both parts. For our LTS release we can officially confirm it will have API support for our 3 new protocols and API support for proprietary DRM. This means that while we may choose to launch our LTS without some of the actual features support can already be built into your website and free upgrades to your LTS will be available. This only counts for the first LTS purchase and will not be a trend for future versions.

If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact us through our contact form or our Google Groups. We really appreciate your feedback.

We are proud to announce that after three years of private development we are now ready to release the first public version of MistServer: our multi-standard multimedia streaming server.

MistServer is a true next generation media server, designed with the future needs of media in mind. Our software allows for limitless scaling, is extremely efficient, compact and stable, with the added benefit of the lowest total cost of ownership.

Built entirely modular from scratch, keeping up support for the rapidly developing world of media becomes possible; in fact - our software can be updated without any service interruptions, not just minor upgrades but even adding support for new protocols on the fly.

This first public release includes support for Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP), HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) and HTTP Progressive. All these protocols support both live and on-demand streaming using any of the codecs supported by Adobe Flash Player. Please consider this release a preview of our technology. More complete support along with more protocols and features will be added in later releases.

You can try out the release yourself by either downloading the binaries here or checking out our source code tree here. Feedback is highly appreciated and can be left here.

MistServer is an initiative of DDVTech. DDVTech maintains the open-source MistServer project. In addition we will operate a number of paid solutions like MistServer LTS, MistSteward and MistCenter. Our paid solutions will be introduced later. If you have any questions don't hesitate to contact us.

Mist consists of three core products: Mistserver, Miststeward and Mistcenter. All three will be launched in Q4 2012.

Mistserver is available as open source software. Alongside the regular free releases, Long Term Support (LTS) releases will be made available through our online store. These LTS releases come with the benefits of three year of support and security/bugfix backports as well as other proprietary features tailored for businesses.

Planned features for future Mistserver releases are, among others:

• MPEG TS protocol support
• RTSP protocol support
• Smooth streaming support
• HLS support
• Video on Demand support
• Live recording and timeshifting (DVR)
• PlayReady support
• Flash Access support

We welcome suggestions and/or code contributions.