Streaming+Media

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Overview
Streaming media is any media that is played ‘on the fly’ so to speak. Streaming media has become increasingly important on the Internet as music and videos have become more predominant. The greatest benefit of streaming media is the immediacy of the content; there is no need to wait for the entire file to be downloaded to the computer in order to view or hear. Content off all sorts have been available for years, through peer-to-peer sharing. Five years ago people would download music videos they wanted to see, watch it, and have it sit on their hard drive and take up valuable real estate until it was deleted. With streaming content such as that on Youtube, the music video file will be stored on the Youtube server and be available on demand; this offers a win/win situation for both the user who gets greater convenience with on demand access to desired content and to the service host who makes money from the side ads they display while showing the content. Television and radio in a sense are streaming content because they continuously streamed to the user, however for this definition it will look to streaming media and it application and relation to the Internet.

History
The idea of streaming content has been around since the 1950’s, the obvious problem with it at that point was lack of adequate technology and extremely high costs at the time. This remained the major deterrent until first; the Internet provided a proper infrastructure for the deployment of media, and second; advances in broadband capabilities of Internet connections. These conditions met in the late 1990’s and streaming media have taken off ever since.

Technical Aspect
The web host first has to have the file located on their server. What happens next uses a protocol called UPD (User Datagram Protocol) or TCP (Transmission Control Package). The main difference between these two transfer protocols is that UPD doesn’t guarantee correct delivery of the file, where as TCP does because it checks to ensure all packets reach the final destination (User, 2006). Faster transmission speeds are available through UPD because it does not check, but more reliable transmission is through TCP, a decision that should be made by the content provider. (Transmission, 2006) Of course there are other transmission protocols, but many are proprietary, meaning that they are the property of the content provider. An example of a provider that uses this technology is Real Networks who use a technology called RTSP (Real Time Streaming Protocol) to stream their content. (Real, 2006)

Streaming essentially takes the file that is located on the server and sends it to the user computer through the transmission protocol, however everything that has already arrived at the user computer can be played. A buffer in streaming media is the amount of information that is stored (already been transferred to user computer) and ready to be used, this helps compensate for slowdowns in Internet connection and avoids chopping of the content.

Ethical Concerns
YouTube, recently bought by Google, is the World’s largest community based media sharing website. By using new technology introduced with Flash 8 media player, YouTube took off and users from around the world began uploading their content for the entire Internet to see (YouTube, 2006). The problem then occurs when people take information that is copyrighted, and upload it with little to no consequence. A few months ago I was able to watch Finding Nemo in its entirety on YouTube all that was done was the uploading user broke it up into 9 parts, and I just watched one after another. Youtube has since removed the content, however YouTube would have received over an hour and a half of advertisement revenues from their display of what is illegal content from every person who viewed the movie. Who is liable or responsible for the display of illegal content, is it the web host, or the user?

It is an ethical answer and depends on who answers the question, it can be seen that the user who submitted the media does not receive any person gain from the media, where as Youtube is benefiting financially and being paid from the illegal display of the media. In the same breath it is extremely hard to control what every user submits, and going through an approval system would hurt the system as a whole.

Future
Streaming content is becoming a driving force in the rapid increase of Internet popularity. Many believe this is the early stages of conversion to Internet based television. [|Bright Cove], a company started initially to provide high quality content has had to alter their own plans in order to try to keep pace with Youtube. They have allowed for user contributions, but are also building to be able to provide high quality content which the believe will eventually be the experience that web users will want. Instead of paying for cable television pay $50 dollars in a subscription service that allows you to view virtually anything you want in high quality and on demand (Levy, 2006). YouTube may be seen as just the beginning in the same way Napster was just the begining for music downloading on the Internet. Bright Cove hopes their predictions about higher quality content being what consumers will want and be willing to pay for turns out to be right because that is what they rely on to give themselves upper hand on free services such as YouTube and Google Video.

Working Example of Streaming Media

 * media type="youtube" key="QsXXKQ8q9qg" || media type="youtube" key="ECCFrr8TfSM" ||
 * media type="google" key="4007016107763801953&hl=en-CA" || media type="custom" key="12620" ||