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m ii n

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g    M

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d ii aa    P

P rr ii m

m ee rr ::      

H

H O

O W

W    D

D O

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S    S

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Year 2000: unique monthly audience 

by player, in millions of viewers 

  most content providers support all the players Microsoft's Media 

per month

16

Player, Real Network's Real Player and Apple's QuickTime in an effort to 

30

RealMedia

Windows

QuickTime

Media

reach as many eyeballs as possible. There are some solutions available 

25

that make it easier to handle multiple bit rates from one source, but 

20

encoding for the different formats continues to be a challenge. In addition 

15

to requiring more employees to handle the encoding, it also requires more 

10

5

space on servers . 

20 28

7 13

7

 Ken Kerschbaumer

million

million

million

Broadcasting & Cable Magazine

17

0

Jan. Dec.

Jan. Dec.

Jan. Dec.

2000

2000

2000

Players

It's all interrelated in a streaming architecture, 

COMPATIBLE

everything must be compatible

CODECS

From the content 

Encoders

provider's perspective, 

CO

F

the situation is even more 

M

O

P

R

A

LE

diffi cult: the RealMedia server 

M

TIB

LS

cannot stream Windows Media 

A

L

T

E

S

PATIB

CO

and QuickTime fi les; the Windows 

TO

Media server cannot stream QuickTime 

COM

PRO

and RealMedia fi les; and the QuickTime 

server cannot stream RealMedia and Windows 

Media fi les. Meanwhile, because end users are 

choosing their default players for different reasons, 

Servers

and no content provider wants their media to be over 

looked simply because the end user has selected one player over 

another, content providers usually choose to encode, serve, and stream their content in at least two, if 

not all three of the major formats. And, making it even more complex and costly, depending on whether 

they are delivering over narrowband or broadband or both, content providers may offer streaming fi les 

at multiple bit rates, within each format. So there may be as many as nine different versions to be 

encoded, stored, and streamed. 

Each architecture has pro and cons, as well as champions and critics. Decisions you make about which 

architectures to use, when, and how, will depend upon the parameters of your project, your audience, 

your objectives, and other factors. Don't be surprised if you fi nd it quite diffi cult to decide this is 

the subject of great debate, even among the experts. But one thing upon which the experts agree, is 

the need for an open, extensible standard that will satisfy the needs of technology providers, content 

providers, and audiences alike.

namic Medianamic Mediayy

Streaming media formats

Architectures are often mistakenly called  formats.  An architecture is much more than just a format. 

A format, also known as a fi le format, is simply the fi le structure an architecture creates with its codecs 

obe D

(short for compressor decompressor you'll learn more about codecs later in this Primer). The fi le 

obe D

dd

format and, therefore, the architecture, can usually be recognized by the fi lename extension (a dot 

AA

plus three characters) tagged onto the name of the fi le. 

11

11

16  Source:   Streaming Media Market Report 2001  by Dale Sorenson, Macintouch Special Reports, April 2001, http://macintouch.com/stream2001.html#2000use

17    The Impossible Stream,  by Ken Kerschbaumer, Broadcasting & Cable Magazine, December 11, 2000