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Subject: UKNM: Re: Streaming - Advice please
From: David Johns
Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 16:30:20 +0100

A few comments on the streaming issue:

Firstly, Real and Windows Media are of roughly equal quality, sound and
picture-wise (proponents of each will argue their corner fervently but to a
large extent they look and sound as good as each other, assuming
same-generation codecs).

A big factor in your choice may be cost - Windows Media has no "per stream"
licence fees but Real does and it's not cheap (approx 7,500 US dollars per
100 simultaneous viewers with no server add-ons - see
http://www.realnetworks.com/products/servers/professional_pricing.html).
However, Windows Media Server only runs on Windows platforms whereas Real
does Unix / Linux as well.

Personally I find RealServer easier to administrate and configure but
neither of them is hard to install and this won't be an issue if you get
someone else to do your hosting.

The other factor against Windows Media is that there are some compatibility
issues on Macs, particularly if you want to embed it into an HTML page; Mac
WM player is also one generation behind the Windows version. RealPlayer runs
on practically any box, though it does nag you to upgrade / pay money /
watch their preferred content.

Whatever you do, I wouldn't recommend Quicktime for streaming (great for
downloads, not so hot on streaming) nor any of the Java-based streaming
systems (bad sound and picture sync in every example I've ever seen and not
such great A/V quality either)

Hope that helps...

Cheers,
David Johns
Visit the streaming media resources directory:
http://www.InternetWebcaster.co.uk


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Replies
  Re: UKNM: Re: Streaming - Advice please, Dug Falby

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