Streaming Media

Audio and video streaming is a distribution technique for multimedia content. Streaming, as opposed to downloading, allows users to watch or listen to the content immediately without having to wait until the whole file is downloaded. Streaming has become a commonplace technique for media organizations to reach their audiences. Likewise, citizens are gaining the capacity to stream their own content as the costs continue to drop.

Advances in bandwidth availability, computer processing power and digital compression techniques allowed streaming to take off in the mid-1990s, making it a practical reality for those with broadband connections. Increases in band-width—that is, the capacity of a given channel to carry data—allowed for the streaming of multimedia content (such as music or video) with large file sizes, as opposed to text that demands far less bandwidth. Continuing increases in computer processing power and advances in compression techniques have enabled a significant decrease in the amount of information that streaming techniques requires. While the content will be of somewhat lower quality due to this compression, most users find this an acceptable tradeoff in exchange for faster speeds and more convenience.

To listen or watch content over one's computer has become widely accepted over the years. A 2007 report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project states that 57 percent of Internet users have watched videos online and that most of them share what they find with others (Madden 2007). With Internet access no longer confined to desktop computers, people are increasingly accessing streaming content by means of a wide variety of mobile devices, such as cell phones. These will not replace television receivers for watching news anytime soon, but they can be useful for those on the move, or at work or traveling.

A variety of multimedia content, including most forms of audio and video, can be streamed. Listening to radio online is the most popular example of audio streaming. In contrast, podcasts, though a popular method of listening to radio online, usually have to be downloaded first and cannot be streamed. Podcasts, however, offer the advantage of syndication; users can subscribe to them and download new episodes automatically. Video requires more bandwidth than audio because of the vastly greater amount of information that is transmitted. Steady increases in bandwidth, with broadband Internet, made video streaming feasible, while the advent of video streaming sites like YouTube has made the practice extremely popular.

Streaming content can be prerecorded or live. Prerecorded content can be streamed at any time a user requests it, whereas live content is streamed at a scheduled time, such as a conference talk or a sports event. A media player is required to stream content. The player can be external, as with software such as Windows Media Player or QuickTime, or the player can be embedded in the website, which is how YouTube works.

Buffering is a technique that complements streaming. If an Internet connection is not fast enough, or is unstable and often interrupted, content may not stream smoothly and “lags” might occur—small intermittent breaks in the streaming process where the streaming cannot continue until either the connection is again stable or fast enough. To prevent these lags, streaming software relies on buffering. Buffering is the process where content is preloaded into memory (e.g., “the buffer”) until it is full before it is actually streamed—in other words, buffering makes sure that there is sufficient content to allow the content to be played uninterrupted. While content is being streamed, software will continue to fill the buffer to ensure a smooth and uninterrupted streaming experience.

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