The combination of hardware and software that allows for storage and transmission of continuous animation and video in real time. The core of a video server is a continuous media operating system that allows animation, audio, and real-time video to be processed and transmitted across networks or over digital television satellites. Major players are rushing to develop video servers, including the over $100 million dollar per year effort by the Advanced Technology Group (ATG) and Microsoft Corporation to develop the Tiger video server as part of the overall information highway architecture development code named Mimosa by Microsoft managers. For a review see Soat (1994) . Microsoft's Tiger Video Server competes head on with rival video servers from IBM, Digital Equipment, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Silicon Graphics Corporation, and others. What is unique about Tiger is that it can save about 90% on costs and can network the video directly into PC computers. For comparisons of video servers, see The Wall Street Journal, February 18, 1994, p. B1. (Also see Switched network and Set-top box )
Islip Media Inc. in Pittsburgh offers a speech recognition search engine for video libraries. It is costly, howver, at $50,000 for a 50 user license. The Islip web site is at http://www.islip.com/