Quote:
Originally posted by kenny
yea but if they have a good connection they can watch it play and skip the download. I guess streaming media isnt for the adult internet
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There's a lot of factors at work here. If there's good bandwidth between the user and the streaming server, then streaming is far superior especially on large clips. If the bandwidth is there, the quality is just as good as a downloaded file. Plus you can skip ahead without downloading the whole thing. If you're dealing with a 10-15 minute or longer clip like the ones that are so popular on reality sites, you can skip ahead to see if the clip is any good without wasting time downloading 30-50 megs.
However, the reason most users prefer to download is that people cant afford a good streaming server and the pipe to feed a ton of broadband users. So a streamed clip is jerky if available at all. The users would rather wait for the download than watch a stream that is constantly having to rebuffer and getting marginal quality. Plus they can then watch it over and over again.
Real Media just released their Helix media server to open source. It'll be interesting to see if anyone comes up with some new viable technical and financially viable streaming models. It really is silly that we're dumping megs upon megs of clips upon these users instead of just streaming the content.