Where Videoconferencing and Streaming Technologies Intersect - Part 1

Regardless of the network, media streams directly between two videoconferencing end points symmetrically. For larger conferencing audiences, a multipoint conferencing unit facilitates the interactivity among meeting attendees. In contrast, most streaming implementations force an end point user (viewer) to communicate with software that controls a file residing on or emanating from a network-based server. And, streaming applications tend to emerge from the need to cost-effectively communicate a consistent message to an audience of multiple people at the convenience of the viewers, not necessarily at the same moment in time.

Besides being a real-time medium, another feature that videoconferencing has in common with telephony is that the category of products emerged from the telecommunications universe, not the PC or Internet worlds with which videoconferencing technology has repeatedly collided and heretofore failed to win over users in mass market numbers. As with its descendant (telephony), videoconferencing standards have been widely adopted and implemented globally since the early 1990s. As a result, videoconferencing systems from manufacturers of standards-compliant equipment are, for all practical purposes, interoperable. There are exceptions to the conferencing standards rule of thumb, especially when it comes to PC-based applications, but even in the case of proprietary solutions, protocol and network gateways frequently offer users the opportunity to communicate between network or protocol "clouds."

In contrast with the widespread adherence to standards in videoconferencing, vendors offering streaming solutions rarely adhere to protocols or formats ratified by internationally recognized standards bodies. Instead they are responding to "industry standards" set by the users who adopt proprietary technologies in sufficiently large numbers to create their own markets. This leads to low interoperability between proprietary formats and has generally created fragmentation and confusion in the market. The one area in which the streaming and conferencing overlap is the video compression algorithm H.263. Designed for conferencing initially, the three major streaming player applications support H.263 decompression.

In videoconferencing, the end point is an encoding and a decoding system, performing both tasks simultaneously and symmetrically without introducing latency. In streaming media, encoders and decoders can co-exist, but the systems designed for media creation are completely distinct from the software designed for media display and "consumption" on the part of the audience. The latency introduced by streaming media codecs, with and without hardware acceleration, during the compression phase creates media that is less computationally demanding to decode and, therefore, suitable for most personal computers.

This leads to the final point of comparison: packaging. One must consider the variety of form factors and platforms suitable for each of the technologies’ user requirements. For videoconferencing, the application can be embedded into an appliance; this is the most popular group system form factor because it hides the complexity from the end user. A user manages the system through a handheld remote control device. The appliance’s operating system may be Windows-based or be running a real-time proprietary operating system. Videoconferencing applications can also run on industry standard servers and personal computers. Eventually, it is likely that mobile communications and computing platforms will also support videoconferencing but since the encoding and decoding/display devices are one and the same, power consumption and processor limitations must first be overcome. Today, streaming media audiences are most frequently using personal computers, and encoding and storage functions use industry standard servers but are also available as appliances.

Despite these numerous fundamental differences, videoconferencing and streaming media are slowly converging on IP networks. Creating rich media content outside the constraints of a studio environment is the most compelling reason for these two technologies to merge and blend.

Coming next week in Part 2: Integrating videoconferencing and streaming as source and delivery platforms