OPTICODEC-PC INTRODUCTION
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network transports and protocols used with their associated servers.
Streaming Server Advantages
Streaming servers open a dialog with the media player. There are two sides to this
dialog — one for passing control messages between the media player client and the
server and one for transferring the media content. Because they continue to ex-
change control messages with the player, streaming servers can adjust to changing
network conditions as the content plays, improving the user experience. The control
messages also include user commands like “play,” “pause,” “stop,” and “seeking to
a particular part of the file.”
Compared to posting downloadable media files to your website, there are many ad-
vantages to streaming:
•
Users can stream your media immediately. There are no lengthy downloads,
regardless of network connectivity.
•
Streaming is the only way to distribute live media content such as radio sta-
tions, playlist streams, entertainment, news, and sporting events.
•
Streaming media files are not limited to file sizes that make a reasonable
download. Long-form media content (such as complete programs, concerts,
and archives) would make multi-megabyte downloads, yet stream effortlessly.
•
Users have complete control over the streaming media content by being able
to pause, seek, and play only the parts they want.
•
Depending upon the server platform in use, multicasting can allow many users
to connect into one stream, dramatically saving bandwidth.
•
Streaming allows you to maintain control over the distribution and copyright
of your media. Anyone can download media content, alter it, and redistribute
it. Although not impossible, it is much harder to redistribute the contents of a
stream.
Web Server Advantages
It is important to understand the difference between HTTP used on a web server
and HTTP/ICY used on a streaming server, and not to confuse the two. HTTP is used
to deliver web pages to a browser and/or to download files. HTTP/ICY is used to de-
liver streaming media content to a client media player. They both use TCP/IP as their
main data transport.
By using web servers, HTTP can deliver fast start or progressive download streaming,
which is not really streaming at all. It is a file download and starts sending data as
fast as the network connection will allow. To the user, it is similar to streaming that
has no stream control features. You cannot move to the end of the file until the en-
tire file has downloaded.
There are some advantages to making your media content available for download:
•
It is easy to implement. Encode your files and put them on your web server
with the appropriate HTML links authored to standard web pages.
