[thelist] progressive download vs streaming server

David Kaufman david at gigawatt.com
Tue Jul 10 08:34:21 CDT 2012


On 7/8/2012 5:58 PM, Bob Meetin wrote:
> Okay, I am weaving my way through this [...]
>
> Am I missing something?

Yes: the other side of the coin, mentioned in your subject, but ignored 
in the body of the thread... streaming with the RTMP protocol!

The makers of the JW Player recommend:

Amazon CloudFront Brings Streaming to the Masses
http://www.longtailvideo.com/blog/12746/amazon-cloudfront-brings-streaming-to-the-masses

which means you can rent the use of a distributed network of edge-cached 
Adobe Flash Media Servers that also support Apple IOS devices (those 
pesky i... -Pads, -Pods and -Phones):

Improved Live Streaming for Amazon CloudFront
http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2012/03/29/amazon-cloudfront-improves-live-streaming-support-with-adobe-fms/

and Amazon AWS is (IMO) fast becoming the least expensive, most reliable 
hosting service.  What I like most is that they periodically either 
lower the prices or increase the storage/speed/bandwidth limits 
(remember when pair used to do that??)

Anyway, with affordable pay-as-you-use streaming readily available, why 
punish your visitors by forcing progressive downloading on them, and 
breaking the seek forward-feature everyone loves in their video players?

I think even the YouTube option is better than progressive download... 
even when it "works"

-dave


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