Fancy listening to some radio or watching a video perhaps? Let your broadband pipe stream it directly to you.
Streaming media is, as the name so eloquently suggests, media that is consumed on your computer as it is being delivered, as opposed to being downloaded first and consumed later. The main benefit of this is being able to watch/listen to what you want straight away, rather than having to wait for hours while it trickles through onto your hard drive.
It's an old idea - the notion of streaming media has been around since the 1970s - but it's only recently, with the availability of more network bandwidth and faster and more powerful computers that we're beginning to see streaming come into its own.
There are two types of media stream, 'live' and 'on demand'. Live streams are, unsurprisingly, streamed as they are happening, such as for a concert or football game. On demand means that the stream is kept on a server, and can be accessed when you like, such as a film trailer or recorded music.
So how does it work?
Streams are stored on a server, and you need to get yourself a client that can request, receive, decode and display the incoming stream to you. The most widely used are
Windows Media Player comes bundled with the Microsoft suite), Apple's
Quicktime (comes bundled with Macs) and
RealPlayer.
It is usually, though not always, possible to record the stream that is delivered to your computer. Many content providers try to avoid you doing this as far as possible, by encrypting the stream or using a weird data format for example, because they're worried that recordings might be for distribution. However, recording for personal use is perfectly legal.
A few places to start you off on your search for cool streams:
•
www.virginradio.co.uk/listen/
•
BBC Radio
•
Shoutcast
•
PublicRadioFan
•
Apple Trailers - the latest film trailers
•
wwiTV - Web TV from all around the world.
Published on 16th January 2007
