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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."
Am I the only one who isn't impressed with the state of streaming media these days? I think the current RealOne player is garbage. At least the original RealAudio wasn't nearly as bad, but it still consumed a lot of RAM and CPU cycles on my 68040.
At least VoIP and video conferencing have taken off and work quite well.
What are some of the better one-way, RealOne-like streaming formats these days?
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?
Linux is not Windows
Just like cell phones and the voice encoders. They are complete crap most of the time, 'cause it's cheaper for the phone companies, even though the technology exists (and isn't all *that* expensive) to have our voices sound perfect in cell phones.
The audio quality of streaming media can be decent, but it often is not. This appears to be for the reason that websites need to cater to those with poor connections. And sure, some sites offer multiple versions of the same thing of varying quality, but that's a minority.
Streaming media is something that could be fantastic, but with all the lack of abiding to the standards and such, I'm not a huge fan.
I do understand that there is enormous amounts of research and new technology poured into streaming media, but I still think to end-users (and myself), streaming is still a disappointing technology. Right now, with windows media and real, it often times is a crap shoot if the media will be there when you're watching it, leading to pauses and the infamous buffering problems. Real and Windows Media are sketchy programs that seem more interested in an attractive interface than ensuring the media looks good. Sure, we can go back and forth about if more people had broadband why it would be better, but right now the crappy resolution, encoding artifacts, and sub-par audio on many streams is unacceptable/unusable.
The best streaming I have seen is simple net-radio MPEG streams (or ogg), or apple quicktime. Apple trailers, though they take longer to buffer being such large files, tend to "guess" when to play it more accurately and are encoded like a professional video should look.
What I simply do not understand is why more websites, if they're pushing the same amount of bits either way, don't offer the complete file for download. I know that sometimes it is streamed to prevent copying, but more often than not, streamed media is not stuff that one would not want copied (being public an all). It may even reduce strain on the server with re-viewings done locally. I think users would be much happier to wait a minute longer if they get a high-quality video/audio file and they know won't stop half way.
It's a cool idea, but even after 10 years, its got a way to go.
To be truthful, the first stream wasn't in 1996. It was way back in 1994, when WXYC started streaming using CuSeeMe. WREK (Georgia Tech's student radio) also started streaming with their own in-house software the same day WXYC went live, but it was not officially advertised until a later date.
More information at: http://wxyc.org/about/first/ and http://www.wrek.org/wreknet-first.html.
-R
EFF Patent Busting Project - Top 10 Most Wanted: http://www.eff.org/patent/ Acacia's July 21, 1992 patent + 1 year earlier: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5,132,992.WKU.&OS=PN/5,132,992&RS =PN/5,132,992
Actually this thread topic is wrong.
Streaming media is much media is older than this according to prior art submissions by the defendants.
I don't want to complain about something I never use, but I've always wanted to see live streaming video on my computer that I could somehow easily verify the transfer delay on. Is there a live video stream somewhere other than cable/satellite tv that I can view?
WXYC, the first radio station to stream over the internet, is offering a free CD for download to celebrate their own 10-years-of-streaming anniversary. (Be a good citizen and use the torrent.)
2^5
At the time that this was released, I was working on a project for streaming audio and video over fibre networks for a Imperial College in London (which is Britains top tech university). I downloaded the real player client and reverse engineered the protocol. To test it, I also downloaded a REM track off the net in .mp2 format. Yes, mp2 not mp3. This probably made me one of the first illegal music downloaders on the net. I wrote streaming software for DEC Alpha unix boxes and got thoroughly sick of hearing "Losing my religion" over and over and over again.
Back in 2004 there was this little noticed press release on their website: REALNETWORKS MERGES REALPLAYER AND MUSIC SERVICES TEAMS INTO SINGLE BUSINESS UNIT. I bet what they're announcing tomorrow is the fruits of their labor, a single program that combines the single-track buy idea with the subscription music idea, into one program and hopefully does it well. Napster does it now, but their subscription program has so many different restrictions on it it's really annoying (eg "buy track only" or "buy album only" and such).
Obviously the "digital music revolution" thing is a lot of hype, but a combined program would be far more effective than what they've got now, so long as it works well and isn't bloated to hell. Also, it'd be nice if they took this opportunity to upgrade the audio quality on the Rhapsody stream files to something like 160 or 192 AAC/RA10 instead of the 128WMA they use right now (the actual pay per track music store uses 192 AAC)
I remember back in the day before anyone knew what a URL was, we'd ftp .au files from wustl and pipe it to /dev/audio on our sparcstations instead of saving it to disk (my univiersity acct had like a 1mb quota back then) streaming audio has never been easier than that
I used streaming audio over IP in 1992. But 2005 - 1992 > 10. What's wrong here??
Streaming audio has been around a LOT, LOT longer than ten years. Commercial streaming audio, maybe. But the idea -- and mature, working implementations -- have been around for far longer.
Anyone else here use Speak Freely on NeXStep? I still fondly remember being the weirdo in the lab who was "talking to his computer" -- actually, talking to a guy in a different city over voice over IP. That was in 1994, and it even had support for encryption. Not to mention all of the work on MBONE.
Other streaming audio apps existed long before that, too.