Streaming media

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Streaming Media

Into the online future - movies music and more

What do we mean by Streaming?

Streaming media is video or audio content sent in compressed form over the Internet and played immediately, rather than being saved to the hard drive. With streaming media, a user does not have to wait to download a file to play it. Because the media is sent in a continuous stream of data it can play as it arrives.

> definition > streaming-media

What can we stream

Any media can be streamed:- Movies, LiveTV, Live Video, Music etc

Apps are available on most platforms to allow us to do this: Movies ? Apps include:- Netflix, Stan, YouTube, Kanopy etc. LiveTV - Apps include:- Freeview, ABC iView, TenPlay, 9Now, SBS on

Demand, 7Plus. Live Video - Apps include:- Facebook Live, YouTube, Periscope. Music - Apps include:- Spotify, Apple Music, Freegal, YouTube Music etc.

Early problems

Download speeds were limited and cable was expensive for many users.

Insufficient Content providers. Little competition meant increased expense.

Early service providers eg Youtube and Netflix used only one or two servers to host their content, and it didn't work well. Users that were far away from the servers experienced lag, and hightraffic days (Saturday night, for example) would slow streaming servers to a crawl.

How to solve the problems?

Servers Broadband Devices

Servers

Improve Infrastructure.

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Companies offering online content have spent an enormous amount of money to solve these problems. This

has meant the creation of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). A CDN

is a Dense global network of servers with the same content.