STREAMING STORED AUDIO AND VIDEO : FROM REALNETWORKS TO YOUTUBE (HISTORY)

RealNetworks, a pioneer in audio and video streaming, was the first company to bring Internet audio to mainstream. Its initial product , the RealAudio system released in 1995, included an audio encoder, an audio server, and an audio player. Allowing users to browse, select, and stream audio content from the Internet on demand, it quickly became a popular distribution system for providers of entertainment, educational, and news content.
Today audio and video streaming are among the most popular services in the Internet. Not only is there is a plethora of companies offering streamed content, but there is also a myriad of different server, player, and protocol technologies being employed. A few interesting examples include:

• Rhapsody from RealNetworks : Provides streaming and downloading subscription services to users. Rhapsody uses its own proprietary client, which retrieves songs from its own proprietary serve over HTTP. As a song arrives over HTTP, it is played out through the Rhapsody client. Access to download content is restricted through the Rhapsody client. Access to download content is restricted through a Digital Rights Management (DRM) system.
• MSN Video : Users stream a variety of content, including international news and music video clips. Video is played through the popular Windows Media Player (WMP), which is available in almost all Windows hosts. Communication between WMP and the Microsoft servers is done with the proprietary MMS (Microsoft Media Server) protocol, which typically attempts to stream content over RTSP/RTP; if that fails because of firewall, it attempts to retrieve content over HTTP.
• Muze : Founded in 1991, Muze, Inc. is a business-to-business provider of media information, metadata, and digital preview samples that enable search, discovery, and purchase of digital entertainment content. Muze media information databases are used by businesses to support the sale of entertainment products – such as music tracks and albums, videos and DVDs, books, and video games – and to attract and retain subscribers to Internet, mobile, and social networking sites. Muze is based in New York City with operations in North America and the United Kingdom.Provides an audio sample service to retailers, such as BestBuy and Yahoo. Music samples selected at these retailer sites actually come from Muze, and are streamed through WMP. Muze, Rhapsody, YouTube, and many other streaming content providers use content distribution networks (CDNs) to distribute their content.
• YouTube :  All YouTube users can upload videos up to 15 minutes each in duration. Users who have a good track record of complying with the site's Community Guidelines may be offered the ability to upload videos up to 12 hours in length, which requires verifying the account, normally through a mobile phone. When YouTube was launched in 2005, it was possible to upload long videos, but a ten-minute limit was introduced in March 2006 after YouTube found that the majority of videos exceeding this length were unauthorized uploads of television shows and films. The 10-minute limit was increased to 15 minutes in July 2010. If an up-to-date browser version is used, videos greater than 20 GB can be uploaded.YouTube accepts videos uploaded in most container formats, including .AVI, .MKV, .MOV, .MP4, DivX, .FLV, and .ogg and .ogv. These include video formats such as MPEG-4,MPEG, VOB, and .WMV. It also supports 3GP, allowing videos to be uploaded from mobile phones. Videos with progressive scanning or interlaced scanning can be uploaded, but for the best video quality, YouTube suggests interlaced videos be deinterlaced before uploading. All the video formats on YouTube use progressive scanning.
    The immensely popular video-sharing service uses a Flash-based client (embedded in the Web Page). Communication between the clients and the YouTube server is done over HTTP.

What is in store for the future? Video quality of streaming will certainly improve as broadband and fiber-to-the-home Internet access become more pervasive. And very possibly our handheld music players will no longer store music, instead we'll get it all,on-demand, from wireless channel.