SPEEDbit Video Accelerator Press Center

Only 50% Percent of Web Users Enjoy Smooth Playing Web Videos;
SPEEDbit Video Accelerator Ends Buffering Problems.

The latest release of SPEEDbit Video Accelerator includes support for HD video acceleration and helps overcome common rich content delivery obstacles

Haifa, 14 July, 2009

SPEEDbit (http://www.speedbit.com/), a world leader in acceleration and optimization technology, announced today SPEEDbit Video Accelerator 3, the latest release of the ground-breaking application that provides for smooth streaming of web videos and HD content.

Video streaming on the web today works generally at 50% efficiency, SPEEDbit has found. SPEEDbit Video Accelerator on average doubles and in some cases quadruples the streaming speed and throughput from sites such as YouTube, resulting in a smooth viewing experience with no picture freezes. What this means for SPEEDbit customers seeking a smooth web video experience is that they can turn to Video Accelerator 3 rather than pay for a faster Internet connection with the same level of inefficiency.

Viewing streaming video online is already one of the most popular uses of the Internet, and watching HD video is rapidly becoming the next major development in the delivery of rich media on the net. In a recent report sponsored by Internet hosting firm Akamai, revenues from online HD video in the US were predicted to reach $2.2 billion annually by 2012. This is reflected in the recent trend of leading video sites looking to HD content to attract new users.

However, the experience for the user has until now been sluggish and cumbersome due to, among many reasons, the Internet protocol inefficiency as a means for delivering rich media. Videos delivered in HD hold considerably greater amounts of data than normal resolution videos. For example, a normal YouTube video will average approximately 3 MB of data per minute of video, whereas an HD video will average more than 12 MB. These large data requirements often clog Internet connections, even for users with ultra-high speed connections. In a recent survey SPEEDbit has conducted, more than 50% of users reported suffering from video freezing when watching YouTube in the US. This was true even for users who reported having an ultra-high speed Internet connection in excess of 10 mbps.

"When we looked at ways to bring the true HD experience to the average user, we realized that we needed to rethink the problem," said Idan Feigenbaum, SPEEDbit's Founder and CTO. "Most attempts have focused on faster delivery of content from the server. We have taken the opposite approach and our patented solution takes the user's available bandwidth and utilizes it in such a way that videos and HD content are loaded onto their machine significantly faster. In effect, rather than pushing the content like others do, we are pulling with much greater force the content onto the user's machine at a faster rate."

"SPEEDbit Video Accelerator 3 is another important milestone in our relentless effort to bring the smooth video experience to our users regardless of where they are located around the world. It is the solution for all, even for ultra-high speed Internet users who, despite their fast connection, still experience picture freezes when watching HD streaming videos" said Ariel Yarnitsky, SPEEDbit's CEO. "We are in the middle of a paradigm shift in the way people around the world consume rich media. It's the "Now Media" era and we are proud to enable it for millions of users around the world".

SPEEDbit is a leader in the field of download acceleration with over 187 million installed applications. SPEEDbit was recognized for its work in video acceleration by the World Economic Forum, which named SPEEDbit a 2008 Technology Pioneer. Additionally, SPEEDbit's flagship application, Download Accelerator Plus (DAP), is the world's most popular download manager and accelerator.

Download the new SPEEDbit Video Accelerator 3 at:
http://www.videoaccelerator.com/download/

About SPEEDbit Video Accelerator

SPEEDbit Video Accelerator accelerates videos from YouTube and over
165 video sites including: MySpace, Metacafe, Dailymotion, Facebook, iTunes (Premium), 5min, Reuters, Phtobucket, Tudou, Bebo, Break, ESPN, CNET TV, AOL, CNN, Discovery, Veoh and many more:
See full list of supported video sites.

SPEEDbit Video Accelerator makes videos from YouTube and over 165 sites stream faster and play smoother, by reducing buffering problems and video interruptions or "hiccups". The unique video search feature lets you find the latest and hottest videos around the web and the "Recently Accelerated" " list gives you instant access to the last videos played. SPEEDbit Video Accelerator for iTunes is the first Video Accelerator Premium version that accelerates the download of all iTunes movies, music videos and TV shows up to 10 times faster.

For more information and materials, please contact: press@speedbit.com

SPEEDbit Video Accelerator (www.videoaccelerator.com) is a pioneering product of unique technology that improves the viewing experience of streaming videos from YouTube and over 165 sites by eliminating buffering problems. SPEEDbit are continuously developing its technology and in the near future, will be able to accelerate even more video downloads from different content providers.

Overcoming the media delivery barrier

Delivering rich media to end user's machines is turning out to be a major challenge for even the biggest media companies. High quality videos (and many times even low quality videos) tend to freeze when streamed to end users, giving a somewhat poor viewing experience. Movies and TV series tend to sometimes take several long hours to download (see Bambi Francisco's article on MarketWatch - Why Wal-Mart's Movie Service is in Beta). These performance barriers slow down the adoption of the online rich media delivery platforms, in their quest to make content easily and readily available to consumers without the need to buy/rent/ship a physical CD or DVD.

Our Solution: SPEEDbit's Patented Multi-Channel Technology

SPEEDbit Video Accelerator supports videos from YouTube and over 165 sites and leverages unique and patent pending multi-connection technology to accelerate the caching of streaming videos, thus helping overcome annoying buffering problems. This product works under the hood keeping the user interface of the respective service in tact. For example when watching a MySpace video, the MySpace interface will simply show multiple leaps a head of the video caching bar, resulting in much faster completion of the caching/downloading of the streaming video.

Whenever a YouTube or other video (see full list of supported video sites) is being accelerated, a small message will show on the right bottom side of the screen indicating to the user that the acceleration is active. The main screen of the product also allows a user to make video searches straight from the desktop application – the video search is based on videos on various video sites such as www.youtube.com, www.metacafe.com etc. more sites are added every day.

Strong growth and high user interest

Within 2-3 days of the first beta release and without any marketing/promotion effort of any kind, we have witnessed an extremely strong viral growth, bringing in up to 20,000 new users per day. To date, SPEEDbit has witnessed over 1 million registered Video Accelerator users in less than 49 days. This clearly reflects the ever growing need for a product that can provide the quality user experience anticipated by rich media consumers, and leaves us wondering what the growth rate will be when the product officially launches...

What's next

Although SPEEDbit Video Accelerator supports videos from YouTube and over 165 sites,the team is already working hard on adapting the product to support even more video streaming and download acceleration. The team has released SPEEDbit Video Accelerator for iTunes and is already working on supporting more proprietary rich media download services similar to iTunes (Premium) such as Amazon's UnBox and Wal-Mart's video download service etc.

About SPEEDbit

SPEEDbit Video Accelerator comes from SPEEDbit (www.speedbit.com), the creators of Download Accelerator Plus (the popular download manager with over 147 million registered users and more than 50k of new users joining everyday). SPEEDbit is backed by Pitango venture capital and Yossi Vardi, the founding investor of ICQ - the pioneering instant messenger that was sold to AOL in 1998, and managed by Ariel Yarnitsky the former general manager of ICQ.