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Darwin Streaming Server Beats Real, Windows Media
pinqkandi writes "Network Computing recently ran an extensive shootout of video streaming servers, in areas from setup to quality to buffering times. The free, open source Darwin Streaming Server, which streams QuickTime content, edged out costly and closed source Windows Media & RealVideo streaming systems." Well, it edged out Real. It blew Microsoft away.
I'd rather download something than stream it. Streams are often much lower quality and it prevents you from time-shifting it, which you should be able to do. For this reason I use Streambox VCR, which you can download here, for downloading .RM files and ASFRecorder, downloadable here, which lets you download streaming Windows Media files, so that you can time shift those as well.
Darwin Streaming Server can stream standard MPEG-4. Not much can actually be used to view such a stream, of course. Not even QuickTime; as has been mentioned on Slashdot, Apple is refusing to ship QuickTime 6 (which has full MPEG-4 support) until the MPEG-4 licensing people come to their senses.
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Here's a tip to get rid of the nag screen: Set your system clock ahead, say, 20 years. Run the quicktime player. When it asks you to buy the full version, click the "later" option. Exit the player. Restore your clock to the correct time. You won't get the nag screen again for 20 years.
My company is using the Darwin Streaming Server for a client project to stream MP3's. You can create SMIL files that auto-detect the right bandwidth-specific version for your connection.
<smil>
<body>
<switch>
<ref title="Title of Song" src="rtsp://streaming.my.localhost/mp3/Title_ of_Song/128.mp3" system-bitrate="220000"/>
<ref title="Title of Song" src="rtsp://streaming.my.localhost/mp3/Title_ of_Song/40.mp3" system-bitrate="45000"/>
<ref title="Title of Song" src="rtsp://streaming.my.localhost/mp3/Title_ of_Song/20.mp3" system-bitrate="20000"/>
</switch>
</body>
</smil>
I don't know much about Linux/BSD software, but RealPlayer and QuickTime plugins can play these streams.
No one at our company had ever done any sort of music streaming before, but I was able to convince the client to go with our solution. It (Darwin Streaming Server - free) is running under Linux (free) as a Apache/Tomcat JSP application (free).
It was the right decision financially (as far as keeping development costs down). It's also nice to see that our decision, in this instance, was the right one performance-wise as well.
Actually we did test motion and sound quality, just not in our blind testing. We based overall quality on the results of the blind testing and found that the results of our blind testers looking at the screen shots mirrored what we found while performing the tests.
Real scored very well at the low bitrates - which is what they've always been good at. Apple scored well for the midrange of our test bandwidths and scored second on everything else. Microsoft actually had the best quality at the highest bitrate that we tested according to our judges.
Not only THAT, but Real the company is a really slimy organization. (Their proximity to Microsoft seems to be rubbing off.)
I recently signed up for the 14 day trial of "Real One" their new streaming service with supposedly special access to radio and video. Well the special programs are so limited as to be useless. So deciding it wasn't worth 10 bucks a month I went to cancel my account before the trial came up.
Though you can sign up quite easily, you have to call to cancel the service. And of course their 1-800 number 1) Doesn't work from Spain where I'm living now and 2) is constantly busy - or puts you on hold for seemingly forever. Thus it cost me at least $20 in long distance to TRY to cancel my account - I haven't been able to do it yet.
That's a REALLY slimy thing to do. Enticing users to sign up and then making it really difficult to quit the service. AOL pulls the same shit. Assholes.
I'll NEVER ever recommend a Real product to anyone ever again.
-Russ
Me