Wooten Reading Class 4

It seems that the leaps and bounds made in streaming applications and playability are dependent on straying from the original design/intent of the Internet as a simple user-to-user site/email interface. This isn't saying anything profound. However, one wonders what the repercussions are when we abandon the original architecture so much and if whatever legacy coding we're dependent on, even in limited forms, is equipped to take us where we need to go.

It's still a bit difficult to discern the individual functions of UDP and TCP vs. HTML within a given coding stream. My impression is that the main purpose of HTML within a coding stream is to keep the page available for viewing during the stream and that audio/video are handled mainly by better-fitted coding languages. Another thought, one of my friends is planning for his wedding this summer, and one of his choices was between offering a buffet or catering individual plates to the guests. The choice seemed analogous to the predicament of delivery management in a given bandwidth for large audiences. Unicasting offers an individual bitstream (an individual plate) however seems to require a more robust server capacity (is more expensive and takes more time to prepare). Multicasting provides the same content to a wide range of people (the banquet-style buffet) however the quality may be slightly lower and there is more competitition.

RealNetworks -- Performance 'superiority' of Real Player 10 is that it maximizes its compression tool. Should this be the most important meter to evaluate all media players on the market? Playable on a wide range of OS's and content formattable on a wide range of systems. But each operating system has its own more favored player (Windows favors WMP, Mac OS favors Quicktime) so it seems that its OS share is spread too thin. Maybe if it aggressively pursues the anticipated Google OS, RealPlayer will get a better market share. The Helix project seemed like RealNetworks took the Linux approach in making it open source in order to try to capture more market share. Doesn't sound like it worked. Users prefer uniformity, and offering variability inevitably leads to incapatibility between systems. Furthermore, I don't believe RealPlayer is bundled with any operating system. So the performance benefits of RealPlayer vs. WMP or QuickTime, theoretically, should be enough of an incentive to warrant the time/energy it takes to simply download it to your computer and NOT use the provided media player. It sounds as if the difference between the three is not great enough for RealPlayer to succeed at that.

I selected NPR.com for my first analysis, as I use it on a nearly daily basis. (It's one of a few streaming media sites that help to keep me sane at my desk job during the day!!) In regards to our class discussion about accessibility, speed, and general ease of use, NPR offers one of the best streaming services I've seen. National Public Radio maintains a large online audience and seems to have embraced its web presence on a comparable level to its traditional radio broadcast. What I enjoy most is its audio archives. An extremely wide range of catalogued news stories, interviews, and various monologues are offered in both RealPlayer and Windows Media Player formats. In terms of hinderances, older audio files seem to be limited to RealPlayer, and there are occasionally issues in trying to access them with an incompatible codec. Access to the live broadcast is also available. NPR also does a great job of incorporating video and other visual media when news stories incorporate them as an integral part of the story. Audio pieces are usually uploaded to the website in a short matter of hours from original broadcast.

One of the better sites I've used in terms of streaming video is MTV.com, surprisingly. The site is dynamically designed-using Flash animation almost shamelessly and is very generous with well-placed hyperlinks. The organization of the video/audio files is very easy to understand and accessible through multiple links. Streaming video programs are offered via a web program called "Overdrive", which organizes its content in genres of "Television", "Movies", "Music", "News", and occasional promotional titles. Some programs are available to watch almost in their entirety online. Users can cycle through video programs easily. Downsides are that users, I believe, must download MTV's own codec and are often required to download security upgrades to have access to these videos. However, the video/audio library is quite extensive, is accessible, and offered in an energetic format.