Streaming Video and Audio In the Internet

Entertainment is a necessity! And thank god we belong to the digitalage when almost all our needs are readily available right in the comforts of our own home. And now that the Internet is here, the focus is not merely on the issue of merely supplying information to the users but giving them the choice to pick only the kind of information they are most interested in, when to obtain these information, where to extract these information from and of how these preferred information should take form. Imagine using your computer in watching your favorite NBA match, your watch your favorite television show or the evening newscast and listen to the live concerts and Webcasts through Castdial. Imagine just sitting in front of your computer screen while searching for articles on the hottest political issues rather than going through those pile of newspapers or magazine archives in your local library. Streaming media is a technique that allows users to view audio and video contents while they are still receiving it. Or as others perceive it, an audio and video file that plays as instantly on a text based content as when a Web page downloads on your browser. And unlike downloading a video or audio file to be played later, it flows to your computer screen enabling you to view its contents simultaneous to the process of downloading. So, how do you stream something into the Internet? Especially video? Here are the basic steps: First, in order to stream a data in video form, a person must use a 30-frames-per-second analog video that is fed by a VCH or video camera to a video board within the computer. This must then be converted from an analog wave form into binary data. This representation is stored in the computer hard disk and further reduced in size by video compression software. The video compression software then scans each of the frames of the video file and distinguishes which are redundant. The redundant ones are erased. Only needed data are retained. A user can then watch a file by clicking on an HTML tag embedded in a website. When he does this the video streaming software on the remote server is released and a steady stream of data begins to flow. But before he gets to watch this, he must have an interface or a "player" installed in his computer. If he has this, he can then watch the file he requested through the website's remote server. Then comes the issue of speed of data retrievals in connection to bandwidth. The snail's pace of the 28.8, 33.6 and 56 kbps modems simply cannot deliver the amount of kilobytes that streaming media demands. This situation provided the Vendors who are well aware of the problems to intelligently devise ways to manage network resources for users faced with streaming media flood. From the snail- blazing 28.8 dial-up connections, there came much advancement. The 33.6 and 56K variants came out as minor upgrades to their 28.8 sibling. This development could be hardly felt by the users so they had to come out of that medium of connection