Streaming media

Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider. With streaming, the client browser or plug-in can start displaying the data before the entire file has been transmitted. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather than to the medium itself. The distinction is usually applied to media that are distributed over telecommunications networks, as most other delivery systems are either inherently streaming (e.g., radio, television) or inherently nonstreaming (e.g., books, video cassettes, audio CDs). The verb "to stream" is also derived from this term, meaning to deliver media in this manner. Internet television is a commonly streamed medium. Streaming media can be something else other than video and audio. Live closed captioning and stock tickers are considered streaming text, as is Real-Time Text.
Live streaming, delivering live over the Internet, involves a camera for the media, an encoder to digitize the content, a media publisher, and a content delivery network to distribute and deliver the content.


History

Attempts to display media on computers date back to the earliest days of computing in the mid-20th century. However, little progress was made for several decades, primarily due to the high cost and limited capabilities of computer hardware.
From the late 1980s through the 1990s, consumer-grade personal computers became powerful enough to display various media. The primary technical issues related to streaming were:
having enough CPU power and bus bandwidth to support the required data rates
creating low-latency interrupt paths in the operating system (OS) to prevent buffer underrun.
However, computer networks were still limited, and media was usually delivered over non-streaming channels, such as by downloading a digital file from a remote server and then saving it to a local drive on the end user's computer or storing it as a digital file and playing it back from CD-ROMs.
During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Internet users saw:
greater network bandwidth, especially in the last mile
increased access to networks, especially the Internet
use of standard protocols and formats, such as TCP/IP, HTTP, and HTML
commercialization of the Internet.
Severe Tire Damage was the first band to perform live on the Internet. On June 24, 1993, the band was playing a gig at Xerox PARC while elsewhere in the building, scientists were discussing new technology (the Mbone) for broadcasting on the Internet using multicasting. As proof of their technology, the band was broadcast and could be seen live in Australia and elsewhere.
RealNetworks were also pioneers in the streaming media markets and broadcast one of the earlier audio events over the Internet - a baseball game between the Yankees and Seattle Mariners - in 1995. They went on to launch the first streaming video technology in 1997 with RealPlayer.
When Word Magazine launched in 1995, they featured the first ever streaming soundtracks on the internet. Using local downtown musicians the first music stream was 'Big Wheel' by Karthik Swaminathan and the second being 'When We Were Poor' by Karthik Swaminathan with Marc Ribot and Christine Bard.
Shortly after in the beginning of 1996, Microsoft developed a media player know as ActiveMovie that allowed streaming media and included a proprietary streaming format, which was the successor to the streaming feature later in Windows Media Player 6.4 in 1999.
In June of 1999, Apple also introduced a streaming media format in its QuickTime 4 application. It was later also widely adopted on websites along with RealPlayer and Windows Media streaming formats. The competing formats on websites required each user to download the respective applications for streaming and resulted in many users having to have all three applications on their computer for general compatibility.
Around 2002, the interest in a single, unified, streaming format and the widespread adoption of Adobe Flash on computers prompted the development of a video streaming format through Flash, which is the format used in Flash-based players on many popular video hosting sites today such as YouTube.
Increasing consumer demand for live streaming has prompted YouTube to implement their new Live Streaming service to users.
These advances in computer networking combined with powerful home computers and modern operating systems made streaming media practical and affordable for ordinary consumers. Stand-alone Internet radio devices emerged to offer listeners a no-computer option for listening to audio streams.