streaming

In reality, we may have seen this streaming process on many occasions on our computers, since it is common in many sites and applications for audio and video consumption. in fact, streaming services such as YouTube, Netflix, Spotify, etc., are currently very popular and are booming.

As precursors in the large panorama of streaming services on the Internet, we find applications such as Real Player or Windows Media Player, programs that are installed as plug-ins in browsers to receive and display streaming multimedia content.

Currently these programs are not widely used and such plugins are no longer distributed. The most normal thing is that we upload the content to a video website and that this content can be viewed through them. In another case, if we want to do it on our own, we would have to install a streaming server, something that is not trivial.

For historical reasons, we explain here the streaming programs that were used at the beginning of this technology.

When we intend to include audio or video on the pages, the best thing to do is to use streaming technology. To do this, we simply have to save the multimedia files in the format of one of the streaming programs and follow some small rules when uploading them to the Internet and placing them on the page. The rules to follow are specific to each system and we will not see them here. The best way to find out how they work is to visit the corresponding web pages, indicated below.

To convert the audio and video files to the format of each streaming program, special programs are used that can be downloaded from the pages of each technology. For example, the program to convert to the format that Real Player reads is called Real Producer.

When developing the web with multimedia content, it will be necessary for us to decide to use a specific streaming technology and not use all of them so as not to force our users to download all the plug-ins on the market. Below we see the three possible streaming technologies of the moment.

• Real Media is arguably the most popular. It is also the company with the most experience in the sector and develops many products aimed at distributing multimedia files. Its website: www.real.com
• Windows Media is Microsoft’s bet. It already has a very large user quota and it will surely increase rapidly since Microsoft includes the plug-in in the typical installation of the operating systems it is manufacturing.
• Quick Time is the third in contention. With less market share.