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that if someone only watches five minutes of a 30-minute video, the bandwidth cost is only for that five minutes. 8. Viral sharing of a video has a negative impact on the author’s ability to correct or update the content. Users can still share a video via links to the content off a streaming server and still allow the content owner the ability to update or change the material at any point. I truly feel that this article is misleading and full of incorrect statements and would ask that the editors review content before it is published. Marc Melkonian Director, Digital Media Online Video Service Seattle Gee, Marc, I’ll have to change my policy of putting articles in the magazine without reading them first.—Ed. The authors respond: Thank you very much for your letter expressing your perspective. Our intention was not to cause conflict, but rather to present our experienced point of view in layman’s terms. As you state in your second sentence, the streaming vs. progressive download debate is one in which your sales team is constantly engaged. Your disappointment was undoubtedly caused by the fact that our position did not align with the position of your company nor provide independent support for your stance in the market (read: give you an article you could purchase reprints of for mass distribution). As far as our competitive debate is concerned, customers are the final arbiters, and it is their use of our products and services that decide our fate. It is a technology’s ability to solve a business problem that sets it apart from its competitors and imitators. Streaming and progressive download are just a means to an end, and ultimately they will each be used for those tasks to which they are best suited. The technology industry is prone to great exaggeration and dramatic positioning. Throughout the life of our industry, every successive evolution of technology threatened to eradicate the former. In the end, that rarely happens. Mainframes, batch processing, and greenscreen applications still have their place. Streaming and progressive download will coexist. Thanks again for your letter. We’ll respond to your comments one by one. 1. We weren’t describing what is possible with each format, only what you’re likely seeing when you view those formats today. Also, the term “streaming media” has been used to cover all forms of video being delivered online. To define: “Streaming media is media that is consumed (read, heard, viewed) while it is being delivered. Streaming is more a property of the delivery system than the media itself. The distinction is usually applied to media that is distributed over computer networks; most other delivery systems are either inherently streaming (radio, television) or inherently non-streaming (books, video cassettes, audio CDs).” (http://audiovideo.ngoina-box.org/?q=node/116) In this article and in the industry as a whole, the terms “progressive download” and “HTTP streaming” are creating a distinction: “A form of streaming (popularized by QuickTime) in which media files begin to play before they are downloaded entirely. This means that they can be sent via HTTP and don’t require specialized server software such as RealMedia files do. (RealMedia files use a specialized protocol called RTSP and require content providers to have a special server application installed.) Also called Progressive Download.” (media.ucsc.edu/glossary.html) “Progressive download (sometimes called ‘Fast Start’) is a method of delivering a movie over the internet so that it can start playing before its file is fully downloaded. With progressive download, a movie has all the data needed to start playing it at the beginning of the file, so QuickTime can start to play the movie as soon as the first part of the file is transferred. Unlike streaming, where you can watch movies without downloading any files, Fast Start movies are actually downloaded to the viewer’s computer.” (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=ServerA dmin/10.4/en/c1qt4.html) 2. The distinction being made is that progressive download typically offers more graceful degradation. Progressive download is more forgiving in server load; as connections increase the buffer time will increase, but service is available. With progressive delivery, the end user can choose to wait for the file to cache enough for an uninterrupted viewing, and modern player implementations dynamically adjust start-to-play times. 3. The distinction being drawn is that with streaming products you have better options for DRM and that with progressive download it’s more difficult to protect your content due to local caching of the content. (http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashmediaserver/articles/digital_media_protection.html); (http://www.realWWW.STREAMINGMEDIA.COM 15 http://audiovideo.ngoina-box.org/?q=node/116 http://media.ucsc.edu/glossary.html http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=ServerAdmin/10.4/en/c1qt4.html http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=ServerAdmin/10.4/en/c1qt4.html http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashmediaserver/articles/digital_media_protection.html http://www.realnetworks.com/products/security/index.html http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashmediaserver/articles/digital_media_protection.html http://WWW.STREAMINGMEDIA.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Streaming Media - August/September 2007

Table of Contents Sweet Sixteen Letters to the Editor Technology and Business Trends IBM Takes Webcasting to the Desktop ROI in the EDU Bank Serves Espresso, Enterprise Video Online Video Advertising: Hit or Miss MLB’s Foul Bawl A Crash Course in Flash Video Newspapers in Multimedia Metamorphosis Webcasting Large Entertainment Events: Seeing Through the Hype Webcasting With Windows Media Can’t Start A Fire . . . A WiMAX Primer Mobile Video at Last Telestream Episode Pro Grass Valley ProCoder 3 Silverlight Is No Flash Killer

Streaming Media - August/September 2007

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