Convincing Your Boss You Need Streaming Media

Streaming? Media? (A Rose by Any Other Name)
A few years ago, if you looked at a live video displayed on a computer screen, you would have been (and perhaps were) disappointed. The term "Streaming Media" was used because it was new, and to call it "television" would have set the wrong expectation for the quality. The whole world is familiar and comfortable with conventional television, and the expectation for the quality of such an electronic moving image was set many years ago in the minds of millions of viewers. To provide anything less than this quality level is unacceptable to many viewers, and with the advent of DVD, viewers’ expectations have only risen.

Streaming distinguishes the media as different from more conventional network data. The Internet was not originally designed for such a continuous flow, which audio and video are. (It is interesting to note that packet switching largely replaced legacy networks that were circuit-based and could only stream.) With the rise of IP telephony and other convergence technologies, our networks are increasingly capable, and we are reaching the point where the term streaming is no longer an important differentiator.

Today, the quality of standards-based streaming video now rivals, and sometimes surpasses, conventional broadcast television. The three principle technology standards for streaming—MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4—are all capable of delivering high-quality streaming media over virtually any network today. In addition, the destination for streaming video is no longer exclusively a software player on your computer, but now includes your TVs, projectors, and video monitors. Hence, streaming media now goes everywhere your enterprise network reaches and potentially reaches the half-billion people connected to the public Internet as well.