The National Football League is now offering streaming video to subscribers in the U.S. and internationally, using adaptive streaming video technology from Move Networks Inc. and management and provisioning from NeuLion Inc.

The NFL opened its streaming video services with its NFL Game Pass service, available to international subscribers that want to watch live NFL games. It followed that up with last week's launch of NFL Game Rewind, which lets U.S.-based fans catch up on games that have already been played for a fee of $4.99 per week, or $19.99 for the rest of the season.

Both services were created and are managed by NeuLion, which built the Move-based video player and all the interactive and social features that are included in the packages. In addition to handling the front-end player design, NeuLion is in charge of the backend integration, billing, and provisioning for the NFL.

The Game Pass and Game Rewind services have a great deal of interactivity built in. Both services allow subscribers to view up to four simultaneous video streams, all with DVR-like controls, including pause, fast forward, and rewind. In addition, the service has integrated statistics and social functions like chat built in.

"The experience is more than just the game. You have chat, you have the ability to watch multiple games at same time," says Chris Wagner, NeuLion's executive vice president of marketplace strategy. "We found that the simulcast experience was not as compelling as the interactive experience."

Both services employ Move Networks' video technology to provide subscribers with the highest-quality video available, regardless of their network connection. Move enables with its adaptive streaming technology, which will provide the highest bit-rate video available, from 300 kbit/s to 2.5 Mbit/s.

For Move, the NFL deal is just one more in a series of wins for high-definition online video. The company's technology was used for more than 650 live events in November, according to CEO John Edwards. And the company claims to be the enabling technology behind about 60 percent of all streams for primetime TV shows online.

"We think of our video very much as a television-like experience," Edwards says. "And if you give consumers a TV-like experience, they will consume it like TV."

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