Streaming Audio 10 Years Old

SlimySlimy writes "This month, streaming audio turns 10. Though first introduced by Real, streaming multimedia is so commonplace today it's hard to believe that it didn't even exist 10 years ago. In line with one of their previous press releases, RealNetworks has released a mysterious website and letter from CEO Rob Glaser celebrating 10 years of Internet streaming audio, as well as announcing a yet-to-be-revealed 'revolution' in digital media. 'On April 26, we are changing the rules of the Internet again, and digital music will never be the same.' Here is their press release from 1995 (when they were still Progressive Networks) announcing the first streaming Internet multimedia."

Comments

Re:Solution searching for a problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, isn't Streaming Audio/Video just another solution searching for a problem that isn't there? Why should I use Streaming Media and suffer from bad quality, have to disable my other uses of my connection, risk having to wait for re-buffering,... when I can just download the same content in a proper format and use fast forward and rewind it, pause it,... in any way I like while watching it full screen in good quality?

Live broadcasts

my DSL must suck, then ...

[Heisenbug]

They introduced it, they were doing it over 28kbps modems (which is probably where all the buffering lines come from ...

No. I have DSL. If I go try to watch, say, the Daily Show on Real or WMP, I expect that about half the time I'll have pauses or drops in quality or whatever because of connection issues. If I go to watch, say, a movie trailer in Quicktime, it downloads as fast as possible, shows me how much is downloaded, lets me start when I think I'll be able to see the whole thing, and lets me pause and jump around within everything already loaded without lag if I want to see something again or wait until the rest is loaded.

All of the cracks about Real come because the model of only giving you the data *right* when you need it is simply inferior to the model of giving you all the data at once. It's another example of rights holders crippling their own damn product in a hopeless attempt to prevent you from downloading it and showing it to your friends.

If web sites are using realtime streaming to show live content, then fair enough -- I don't blame Real if the connection gets slow. If they're using realtime streaming to show short pre-recorded clips that could easily fit in a RAM buffer, then they deserve ridicule for doing it, and Real deserves ridicule for encouraging it.

Re:my DSL must suck, then ...

[GarfBond]

Then you haven't used a modern version of RealPlayer recently. RealPlayer 10 does exactly just what you describe: precache the file if your connection can handle it while it's playing. I've even noticed WMP10 doing this not too long ago, so this feature is not unique to QT.

At least on Windows, here's how you enable it:

• Tools>Preferences
• General|Playback Settings
• Cache on-demand streams for faster seeking and smoother playback

Next time you're playing a file, you should notice a little green bar scrolling across the progress bar, indicating how far ahead you've cached the file. I don't know if this requires the special Helix server to do this, but I don't think so since it does it on basically every file I've played. The windows media-equivalent might require the server use the WM Server though, since this isn't something I've seen happen too often. If you want to eliminate the "buffering" syndrome, you might want to turn on TurboPlay too, which is in the same panel as the cache setting. I have no idea if either of these are turned on by default (but they probably should be).

Re:10 years of streaming at WXYC

[cianduffy]

Sorry to piss on the parade here, but XFM, then Alices Resturant, were streaming on the web in 1992

13 years ago.

http://www.xfmdublin.com/

Now, who the hell *listened* to them, I dunno; as I was unable to get a decent net connection in this city till 2004..

I also doubt they were the first, but it proves WXYC *weren't* the first.

Re:So...

[vsync64]

Or go get RealPlayer Enterprise. The BBC issued an ultimatum that they were going to switch away from RA unless Real offered an no-ad, no-spyware version. Cleanest multimedia player I've seen yet on Windows, and very unobtrusive.