Your Guide to Media Streaming

What is media streaming?

Media streaming refers to the process of delivering multimedia content, be it audio or visual to an end user. Traditionally, the medium of delivery for video has been via television signals, and before this, audio was transmitted by radio.

Media streaming dates back to the mid-20th century. However, due to the lack of suitable technology its progress was fairly slow. In the 1980s, personal computers began to make it into the mainstream, complete with the CPU power to display media such as video. At this stage, however, media was limited to non-streaming media such as CD Roms

The advent of the internet completely revolutionised the whole process of streaming, opening up a host of new and exciting possibilities. Initially this was curtailed by the relatively slow speed of dial-up internet access. When broadband came on the scene, however, streaming really took off and came into the mainstream as a dominant media, and as an effective means of displaying information to the masses. As broadband becomes increasingly more widely available, including the rise in the usage of mobile broadband, people now have greater access to the internet than ever before. This has fuelled the demand for live video streaming services.

Many companies are now offering IPTV. Giants BskyB are among a number of broadcasters who offer free online streaming of their channels to subscribers. Experts are predicting that in the future, as technology continues to develop at a rapid pace, more and more video content will be streamed via the internet. The devices used to access streams will also develop, with 3G enabled mobile phone handsets capable of streaming media in real-time becoming more widely used.

The beauty of the internet is that it is a cost-effective platform, which can allow you to stream media almost instantaneously to audiences across the globe. One could cite YouTube as a shining example of the level of demand for streaming media. Many businesses have embraced this new technology offering useful and entertaining streaming media content to help them establish strong brand awareness.

Live vs. on-demand video streaming

Media streaming comes in 2 forms, live and on demand. The difference between these is as follows:

Live streaming is a real time, one-off broadcast of an event which is transmitted instantly to the recipient.

On demand video streaming is stored on a server and is transmitted at the user’s request.