Humanizing Internet!

What is Streaming Media?

Is technique for transferring data such that it can be processed as a steady and continuous stream. Streaming technologies are becoming increasingly important with the growth of the Internet because most users do not have fast enough access to download large multimedia files quickly. With streaming, the client browser or plug-in starts displaying data before the entire file has been transmitted.

For streaming to work, the client side receiving the data must be able to collect the data and send it as a steady stream to the application that is processing it and convert it to sound or pictures. This means that if the streaming client receives the data more quickly than required, it needs to save the excess data in a buffer. If the data doesn't come quickly enough, however, the presentation of the data will not be smooth.

.BBA: Audio Streaming Technology

.BBA technology from Indiastreams, that can voice enable written online communication, can bring major benefits to the Internet users, according to the company. The concept of .BBA audio is based on a technology, which overcomes the disadvantages of currently available streaming technology. The present scenario is that Internet has been deprived of the audio as low bandwidth has always been a hindrance in the way of audio enabled Internet. But this technology can broadcast audio at multiple bit rates (MBRs) with multiple platforms and multiple browser support without any additional players. Any Internet user with a proper browser is can make use of this technology.

The concept is being developed with a vision to lead Internet towards convergence beginning with the audio enablement of the Internet presence. It tries to overcome the disadvantages of the currently available audio streaming media technologies like Windows Media, Real Player and QuickTime.

Audio streaming is basically a technology, which allows audio to be streamed from the server it is hosted at. The concept of streaming allows the audio file to be played when it is partially downloaded, actually the file can be buffered to play at a particular percentage of the total file size. This enables the file to be played from its buffer while the file is downloading to the temporary Internet files of the computer.

The dominant players of the streaming media industry like Microsoft and Apple have following disadvantages with their products:

The BBA audio streaming technology is based on Java based audio players that work without software requirements, buffering delays and also supports multiple bit rate support for streaming audio on Internet. The concept of the .BBA audio, encoder, server, and audio players is a solution in itself for adding to the Internet presence. It provides support to plan, design, create, encode, integrate and deploy Internet sound broadcasting. The code generator section of the software is a complete interface with multiple parameters to generate the code to be embedded in the html for the audio to be broadcasted. Moreover, BBA audio and voice players support .BBA audio with multiple bitrate. The most important feature of the technology is MBR (Multiple bit rate) which helps in targeting different bandwidth users. The encoded audio is uploaded in 2, 4 and 8 bits on the server so as when the MBR technology meter detects the user ends bandwidth it automatically allocates the suitable bit rate to the user.

The applets are designed for fast delivery of audio content. The AudioPlayer applet can detect actual CPU availability and connectivity of the end user and deliver a file of appropriate size and fidelity. The JavaScript API is included in the installation package that allows delivery of audio applications without having to write any code.

BBA ENCODER is a new addition to Indiastream's software toolkit designed to integrate streaming media into a web page with optimized delivery by detecting in real-time the end-user's available media player, connectivity speed, browser and platform and automatically streaming the appropriate file for the best audio experience.

Market Forecasts

Past five years have witnessed explosive growth in streaming media. According to a report by Accustream iMedia Research, high speed Internet is radically altering the viewing patterns of streaming media users online, and it will continue to register double-digit growth gains on the both the audio and video sides through 2005.

News and information was the most active content segment, with over 1 billion streams served, followed by Music videos with 883.2 million streams served. However, in terms of growth, music videos and music related streaming video grew by 85.5% in 2002 compared to 2001, the highest of any content segment. Total broadband streams served in 2002 are estimated at 2.46 billion video streams, or 62.5% of total streams served. The comparable figure in 2001 was 1.33 billion video streams served, making up about 51.7% of the total market. Sites with primarily broadband content (defined as 100 Kbps encoded streams and above) and traffic delivered approximately 6.89 streams to each unique user per month in 2002. Internet radio averaged 94 million aggregate tuning hours per month in 2002, down by about 6% compared to 2001.

The audio streaming technology has been here for sometime, though not without its glitches, with big players like Microsoft and Apple. And, according to AccuStream Research, while major brands will continue to dominate key categories of streaming media ratings, along with major online-only brands such as Yahoo, Real Networks and AOL Broadband, there is a developing opportunity for new and independent producers with good programming ideas. BBA Audio technology is a 'playerless' technology, but can be packaged into a product for the end users, says Jatin Mahindra of "Indiastreams." The company is also working on a video-streaming product. Market forecasts show promising numbers for the technology and for Indiastreams if their products can deliver on promise, what lies ahead is a 'bright-future.'