OVERVIEW

Video streaming is the process of delivering video content to a viewing device for immediate display. Streaming is often the first application that springs to mind when people think about transporting video over a network. As discussed in this book, many other types of applications are possible with video over IP. Nevertheless, streaming is an important application for video over IP networks, and it makes sense for us to cover it in some detail.

Many users will have encountered video streaming while surfing the web, particularly if they sought out video content. Popular video sites include CNN.com for news stories; sonypictures.com, warnerbros.com, and Disney.com for trailers of upcoming movies; and mtv.com or music.yahoo.com for music videos. In addition, a number of sites offer actual television programming over the Internet, including researchchannel.com (a lovely 1200 kbps signal) and Bloomberg television (at http://www.bloomberg.com/streams/video/LiveBTV200.asxx). All of these sites provide users with full-motion and synchronized audio that can be played on a normal PC equipped with a suitable-speed Internet connection and the software necessary to receive, decode, and display the video streams.

In this chapter, we will be limiting the discussion to one-way delivery of video content over a general-purpose data network. Two-way (or more) videoconferencing will be handled in Chapter 10. Video delivery over special-purpose video networks will be discussed in Chapter 13 on IP video to the home. We'll begin with a discussion of some of the key concepts related to streaming, including some of the basic technology. Then, we'll look...