I just upgraded my lab environment from MPS (dare I say it) 4.0 to the latest XenApp 5.0 FR2. I thought why not do a demo of the renamed SpeedScreen (HDX) features…

First off, I wanted to do a client side rendering video with Flash but the documentation concerning HDX is confusing the frac out of me.

With the XenApp 5 FR2 DVD you even get .adm templates to enable flash offloading to the client but when I read the Troubleshooting the HDX MediaStream document it clearly states: “Flash, QuickTime and Silverlight media are currently rendered server-side” So it would seem that the product is not quite there yet or some documentation needs to be updated! [EDIT: De support document seems to talk about previous versions of HDX so that document is out of date] (Thanks to Hans @ Datacrash for checking this!)
I then tried some other scenario’s but ended up taking two video’s, one where I played a local .wmv with HDX Mediastream completely disabled and then enabling it and playing the same .wmv which then gets rendered on the client. (once I’ve figured out the flash client rendering settings I’ll see If I can get some footage of this feature)
So without further delay..here is the video of a .wmv with HDX Mediastream DISABLED:

WMV Video on TS With Citrix HDX Multimedia Acceleration Disabled from Virtualistic.nl on Vimeo.

Wow, I can just hear the users screaming down the hall..”my session is not responding!!!!!!!!!!”
Then the same video with HDX Mediastream ENABLED. By enabling Mediastream, the video is no longer rendered on the Citrix server but on the client:

WMV Video on TS With Citrix HDX Multimedia Acceleration Enabled from Virtualistic.nl on Vimeo.

What do you think..impressive..?

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Tags: Citrix, HDX, demo, video, speedscreen