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.

Comments

Anyone else surprised?

[RevAaron]

I admittedly have almost nil experience with streaming servers (or clients, for that matter) except for mp3 streams. I must say that I'm surprised that Apple's Darwin QTSS beat out Real and MS! Not bad for something open source and free. Didn't expect it, given my percieved relative unpopularity of it. Is it behind more sites that I seem to be noticing, or is it really a well-kept secret?

Re:Anyone else surprised?

[jon_c]

I've played with Darwin a bit, the thing to understand is there are a lot of peices to a 'media server'. There's a video encoder card (the oone they used was $2,000) and there's a encoder, like WMA, Real, or Sorenson. Once you put the video source and the encoder together you have a 'video source', which is what these media servers will 'serve' to the clients.

You could think of Darwin as a amplifier, as it only does the TCP/IP server end, Real and Windows Media do the whole thing. It's also interesting that the auther credits Apple with having a such a wonderfull FREE product, but then lists the $250 Sorenson Media's Broadcaster and the $500 Sorenson 3 encoder ($499), not exactly free. While Real charges around 5k for the whole package and Microsoft charges nothing as it comes with Win2k.

-Jon

Re:Anyone else surprised?

[Phroggy]

Not bad for something open source and free.

Note that QTSS is NOT a project started by random open-source developers who wanted to play around; it's a project built and funded entirely by Apple, which chose to release it as open source after it was already running (it was previously called Darwin Streaming Server and was released before Mac OS X 1.0 shipped).

It's the player stupid

[Spacelord]

I think in the end the player will determine which platform will be more succesful, and Microsoft is better placed there.

Not that I love Media Player, but it sure beats that crappy Real Player or that irritating nagware that is Quicktime. Plus it comes bundled with windows...

I know that whenever I'm presented with a choice of streaming media, I usually pick the one for mediaplayer.

Re:Great, but...

[melatonin]

nowadays there are other CODECs like On2's VP5 which kick the snot out of Sorenson

Hmm. I haven't used On2 in a while, but Sorenson 3 really is the good stuff, the best I've seen so far. I've been really amazed at what it's capable of; 600x400-ish video at 200 k/s, that does NOT look compressed, at all. This is with the free encoder without using Media Cleaner.

Sorenson 2 isn't much competition for anything anymore.

I'd think in the future, Sorenson 3 will be more like the high-quality versions of the Qdesign codec- kicks the crap out of the MPEG solution, but more proprietary (and no free high-quality encoders). You'll probably see movie trailers available in higher-quality, lower-bitrate versions next to MPEG-4 versions.

Check out the survey

[MikeMo]

The survey of folks deploying streaming servers said that the #1 most important thing when choosing a format was quality. But, the #1 most-deployed format was Windows Media, which was judged to be, by far, the worst format for quality. What does this tell us?

Re:It's the player stupid (NOT in corps)

[gosand]

Not in corporations. In corporations and businesses, it is whatever they tell you it is. It doesn't matter if it is less efficient, or more expensive, it is whatever is mandated. If it is easier for them to set up the server, then the end users be damned. Sometimes it is ease over cost, sometimes the other way around - depends on the size and intelligenge of your business people.

I have seen it first hand in the product our company produces. I am in QA, and even though I have raised several issues about the usability of our product, the end result is - it doesn't matter. The end user will use whatever they are told to use. We sell to hospitals, and cater to the administration needs, not the end user needs (nurses, stock people, etc). As long as we can sell it, and it does what the "higher-ups in the hospital want", the end user isn't a factor.

I think that is what would happen with a company setting up streaming media - the end user will use whatever they decide they will use.

Best thing about the article....

[gilroy]

... It opens with a scene from Buckaroo Banzai: Across the 8th Dimension . Yay.

Re:Exactly as I thought

[jonwiley]

The popularity of Windows Media with content providers is a direct result of the ubiquity of the Windows Media client. It is another example of how Microsoft has used (abused?) their monopoly of the OS.

Windows Media Player is available on every Windows machine. The Quicktime Player isn't. Quality loses out to quantity.

The interesting part...

[ablair]

...of the article was the software ratings compared with the user survey:

What is the most important aspect of a video stream?
Low Bandwidth 27%
Quality 73%

Video Quality Report Card:
QuickTime 4.1
Real 3.7
WMP 2.5

In what format do you provide content to your users?
QuickTime 22%
Real 31%
WMP 42%

In other words, with quality being the most important factor, WMP wins - despite being the lowest quality of all. (Both QuickTime and Windows Media solutions are free) Hmmm... sounds like other familiar Microsoftian stories.